Hugo Hoyama (born May 9, 1969) is a retired Brazilian

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

player of

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

origin who has won several medals in single, double and team events in the Latin American Table Tennis Championships. Along with Gustavo Tsuboi and Thiago Monteiro, Hoyama was part of the winning team at the 2007 Pan American Games and 2011 Pan American Games.

Career

Born in São Bernardo do Campo,

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

, Hoyama broke the Brazilian record of most gold medals in the

Pan American Games The Pan American Games (also known colloquially as the Pan Am Games) is a continental multi-sport event in the Americas featuring summer sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The competition is held ...

, which used to belong to the Brazilian swimmer

Gustavo Borges Gustavo França Borges (born December 2, 1972) is a Brazilian former competitive swimmer. He swam for Brazil in the Summer Olympic Games in: 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. Borges has won the second-most Olympic medals of any Brazilian, with fo ...

and participated in every Olympic game since debuting as an Olympian at the 1992 Olympic Games and competed in the 2012 Olympic Games, where he plans to retire as an Olympian. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, reaching the round of 16 and finishing in ninth place in the competition, beating world champion Jorgen Persson of Sweden along the way, Hoyama posted the best result in Brazilian tennis table history at the Olympics. He was only surpassed in 2020 by Hugo Calderano, who reached the quarterfinals. In 2007, Hoyama was invited by

Carlos Nuzman Carlos Arthur Nuzman (born 17 March 1942) is a Brazilian lawyer and former volleyball player, having competed professionally from 1957 to 1972 and represented the national team between 1962 and 1968. Nuzman was part of the first Brazilian male v ...

from the

Brazilian Olympic Committee The Brazilian Olympic Committee or BOC ( pt, Comitê Olímpico do Brasil – COB) is the highest authority in Brazilian sport and the governing body of Brazilian Olympic sport. It was officially founded on June 8, 1914, but World War I cause ...

to be the flag bearer for Brazil at the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara. According to Nuzman, the choice of Hoyama displays support from the committee to all sports that Brazilians play. Hugo is the founder of the Hugo Hoyama Foundation. Other than his native Portuguese, Hoyama also speaks English, Spanish and Japanese

In popular culture

Hoyama is briefly mentioned in the eighth episode of the fourth season of

The Office ''The Office'' is a mockumentary sitcom created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, first made in the United Kingdom, then Germany, and subsequently the United States. It has since been remade in ten other countries. The original series o ...

American TV series. Table tennis plays a major role in the plot and Dwight Schrute says he even has a life-size poster of Hugo Hoyama in his room.

References

External links

Career

In popular culture

See also

References

External links