Nobutaka Taguchi

Nobutaka Taguchi is a retired breaststroke swimmer from Saijo, Ehime — that quiet corner of western Japan hugging the Seto Inland Sea — and honestly, growing up that close to the water and deciding to spend your life racing through it feels less like a career choice and more like inevitability. Born in 1951, he belongs to that postwar generation of Japanese athletes who were grinding through pools before the country had even fully found its footing again, which gives his whole story a kind of quiet toughness I find genuinely compelling. He stuck with competitive swimming all the way through Hiroshima Shudo University, so this wasn't a casual hobby — the guy committed. He won Olympic gold in the 100 m breaststroke in Munich in 1972, and the era tells you something too: swimming in Japan in the 1960s and 70s was serious, disciplined, unglamorous work, and people who did it loved the sport for its own sake. That tracks for me.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Nobutaka Taguchi is a retired Japanese breaststroke swimmer born on June 18, 1951, in Saijo, Ehime Prefecture. He continued his swimming career through university, attending Hiroshima Shudo University. He competed at the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics and won gold in the 100 m and bronze in the 200 m breaststroke at the 1972 Munich Games.

Name (English)

Nobutaka Taguchi

Name (Japanese)

田口信教

Reading

たぐち のぶたか

Born

June 18, 1951 (age 75)

Origin

Saijo, Ehime Prefecture, Japan

Height

173cm

Occupation

Competitive swimmer

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Rabbit

University

Hiroshima Shudo University

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%94%B0%E5%8F%A3%E4%BF%A1%E6%95%99
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q735796

Tags

• From Ehime Prefecture
• Competitive swimmer

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.