Murofushi's hammer throw legacy intact

Murofushi. The name sounds quite familiar.
Those who were there at Delhi's Nehru Stadium in 1982 will remember a certain Shigenobu Murofushi winning the Asian Games hammer throw gold medal.
It was a habit with the man. Soon after winning it for the fourth time, he was in the crowd in the grandstand demonstrating the finer points of his art to anyone interested in learning it.
You should have known better if you had thought that spinning around and heaving a 7.26kg iron ball and chain was a pretty basic art. You had to be there with pen and pad, very much like a student taking notes before exam time. To learn it was not so simple.
Son Koji Murofushi, who won the hammer gold at the World Athletics Championships at Daegu last week, was eight years old then. At 37, he became the oldest man to win the world title.
After returning home from Korea with his gold medal you can imagine him lecturing students at Nagoya's Chukyu University on the intricacies of his art, breaking down the action and explaining, for example, the part a nerve in the hip might play, much like his father did that day in 1982 at the Nehru Stadium.
Koji is a visiting professor at the university, with a doctorate in biomechanics. No family in the history of track and field has dominated an event like the Murofushis have.
Tiger father begets tiger son, says a Chinese proverb. Father Shigenobu held the Japanese record for 23 years till son Koji replaced him. In fact, the son went on to do even better than father, who in his time was known as the "Iron Man of Asia."
Before winning the World Championship gold at Daegu, Koji had won the Olympic Games gold medal in 2004 at Athens. He may now be eying the gold at London next year, though that will not be easy.
At Daegu, he could beat the silver medalist Krisztian Pars of Hungary by a mere six centimeters. Murofushi's winning throw measured 81.24 metres and Pars 81.18, so close it was.
However, the story of the Murofushi clan does not end here. Shigenobu's daughter Yuka Murofushi has established her own place in the sport both as hammer and discus thrower.