page_title: 1964 Summer Olympics
section_title: Highlights
hierarchical_section_title: 1964 Summer Olympics / Highlights
caption_attribution_description: Tokyo Olympics 1964 Opening Ceremony.
context_page_description: The 1964 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Tokyo, Japan, from 10 to 24 October 1964. Tokyo had been awarded the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this honour was subsequently passed to Helsinki because of Japan's invasion of China, before ultimately being cancelled because of World War II.
  The 1964 Summer Games were the first Olympics held in Asia, and the first time South Africa was barred from taking part due to its apartheid system in sports. Tokyo was chosen as the host city during the 55th IOC Session in West Germany, on 26 May 1959.
  These games were also the first to be telecast internationally without the need for tapes to be flown overseas, as they had been for the 1960 Olympics four years earlier. The games were telecast to the United States using Syncom 3, the first geostationary communication satellite, and from there to Europe using Relay 1. These were also the first Olympic Games to have color telecasts, albeit partially.
context_section_description: Yūji Koseki composed the theme song of the opening ceremony.
  Yoshinori Sakai, who lit the Olympic flame, was born in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, the day an atomic bomb was dropped on that city.
  Kumi-daiko was first exhibited to a worldwide audience at the Festival of Arts presentation.
  Judo and volleyball, both popular sports in Japan, were introduced to the Olympics. Japan won gold medals in three judo events, but Dutchman Anton Geesink won the Open category. The Japanese women's volleyball team won the gold medal, with the final being broadcast live.
  The women's pentathlon (shot put, high jump, hurdling, sprint and long jump) was introduced to the athletics events.
  Reigning world champion Osamu Watanabe capped off his career with a gold medal for Japan in freestyle wrestling, surrendering no points and retiring from competition as the only undefeated Olympic champion to date at 189–0.
  Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina won two gold medals, a silver medal and two bronze medals. She had held the record for most Olympic medals at 18 (nine gold, five silver, four bronze) which stood until broken by American swimmer Michael Phelps in 2012.
  Czechoslovakian gymnast Věra Čáslavská won three gold medals, including the individual all-around competition, crowning her the new queen over the reigning champion Larisa Latynina.
  Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser won the 100 m freestyle event for the third time in a row, a feat matched by Vyacheslav Ivanov in rowing's single scull event.
  Don Schollander won four gold medals in swimming.
  Abebe Bikila (Ethiopia) became the first person to win the Olympic marathon twice.
  15-year-old Sharon Stouder won four medals in women's swimming, three of them gold.
  New Zealand's Peter Snell became the only person to win gold medals in both the 800 m and 1500 m in the same Olympics.
  Billy Mills, an unfancied runner, became the only American to win the gold in the men's 10,000 m.
  British runner Ann Packer set a world record in becoming the surprise winner of the 800 m, having never run the distance at international level before the Games.
  Bob Hayes won the 100 metre title in a time of 10.06 seconds, equaling the world record, and set the current record for the fastest relay leg in the 4×100 m.
  Joe Frazier, future heavyweight champion of the world, won a gold medal in heavyweight boxing while competing with a broken thumb.
  This was the last Summer Olympics to use a cinder running track for athletic events, and the first to use fiberglass poles for pole vaulting.
  Zambia declared its independence on the day of the closing ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympics, thereby becoming the first country ever to have entered an Olympic games as one country, and left it as another. This was celebrated in the ceremony itself by the team using a placard with "Zambia" instead of the "Northern Rhodesia" placard from the opening ceremony. Zambia was the only team to use a placard in the closing ceremony.
  The start of operations for the first Japanese "bullet train" (the Tōkaidō Shinkansen) between Tokyo Station and Shin-Ōsaka Station was scheduled to coincide with the Olympic games. The first regularly scheduled train ran on 1 October 1964, just nine days before the opening of the games, transporting passengers 515 kilometres or 320 miles in about four hours, and connecting the three major metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka.
caption: Yoshinori Sakai running to the Olympic cauldron.
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