In 2024 at the Paris Olympic Games. Hiroaki Sato lead the Japanese men's artistic gymnastics team to victory as the head coach in the men's team final winning gold for Japan. In 2017 Hiroaki was asked by his childhood friend Kohei Uchimura to play the role of his personal coach in the final chapter of his gymnastics career as he prepared for the Tokyo Olympic Games. He spent four years working alongside arguably the greatest male gymnast of all time in Kohei Uchimura. His achievements include two all around Olympic titles and six back to back world championships gold medals which made him the most dominant athlete in the sport for a decade. Preceding the time he spent with Uchimura, Hiroaki coached the great Naoya Tsukahara the Athens 2004 Olympic champion with team Japan. Since Paris he is now working in Australia as the high performance head coach of the men's gymnastics team with the 2032 Olympic Games being held in Brisbane. Hiroaki sits on the FIG commission and is passionate about coach education. Remarkably as s a young gymnast he was coached by Nikoli Andrianov a fifteen times Olympic medalist, was mentored by Vitaly Scherbo's coach in his early coaching career and then went on to work alongside the legendary Kohei Uchimura. This conversation was a real highlight for me personally and I'd like to thank Hiroaki for giving us his time. And this is his story.
