Shingo Kunieda was awarded the People’s Honor Award on the seventeenth for attaining the “Lifetime Golden Slam” of profitable all 4 Grand Slam tournaments and the Paralympic Games as a number one wheelchair tennis participant.
Shingo Kunieda is 39 years outdated from Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture.
For a few years, he’s a number one determine on the planet of wheelchair tennis.
At the age of 9, a spinal twine illness left him with a incapacity in each legs, and two years later he began enjoying wheelchair tennis.
In 2006, on the age of twenty-two, he turned primary on the planet rankings for the primary time, and boasted a document 28 singles titles on the 4 Grand Slam tournaments, setting unprecedented information one after one other.
He has participated in 5 consecutive Paralympic Games because the Athens Games in 2004, and in singles he has gained consecutive titles on the Beijing Games in 2008 and the London Games in 2012, and gained his third gold medal on the Tokyo Games two years in the past. .
Last 12 months, I gained the Wimbledon Championship, a long-cherished want, and achieved the “Lifetime Golden Slam” by profitable all 4 majors and the Paralympic Games.
Former world champion Roger Federer, who has gained 20 Grand Slam tournaments in whole, was requested, “Why aren’t there any world-class tennis players from Japan?” Kunieda is there, is not he?” is a well-known episode.
On January twenty second, Kunieda retired from energetic responsibility whereas nonetheless ranked primary on the planet.
At his retirement press convention final month, he seemed again on his 28 years of aggressive life with a smile, saying, “I had the best tennis life ever.”
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