15-Time Paralympic Gold Medalist Mayumi Narita Dies, Aged 55

One of the most-decorated Paralympic swimmers in history Mayumi Narita died on Friday. She was 55 years old.

The cause of death was intraheptic bile duct cancer, a rare cancer of the bile ducts in the liver.

Narita, who is Japanese, won 15 gold medals, 3 silver medals, and 2 bronze medals between 1996 and 2004 at the Paralympic Games. That included 6 gold medals at the 2000 Games and 7 at the 2004 Games in the S4, SM4, and SB3 categories.

Narita had used a wheelchair since the age of 13 because of myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that disrupts the brain’s communication with the body. She joined a swim team at age 23 when invited by friends, but on the way back from her first meet in 1994, she was involved in a traffic crash. That event left her hospitalized for 5 months and quadriplegic.

“Sports have helped me to grow. People often tell me that seeing me swim encourages them, and I gain strength when I see them cheer,” Narita said in a 2016 interview. “Sports have an amazing power that cannot be expressed in words.”

Narita retired from swimming after the Beijing Paralympic Games at 38 years old. She then became involved in the Paralympic movement on the administrative side. She was an executive board member of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid committee that won the right to host the 2020 Games (postponed to 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic).

Narita was named the 2005 Best Female Athlete award by the International Paralympic Committee. A year earlier in Athens, she set 6 World Records and 7 Paralympic Records en route to a 7 gold, 1 bronze medal performance.

Her 15 gold medals tie her as the 12th most in Paralympic Games history.

List of Most Decorated Paralympic Athletes in History

No.	Athlete	Nation	Sport	Years	Games	Sex				Total
1	Trischa Zorn	United States	Swimming	1980–2004	Summer	F	41	9	5	55
2	Ragnhild Myklebust	Norway	Biathlon, Cross-country skiing, Ice sledge racing	1988–2002	Winter	F	22	3	2	27
15	Ihar Boki	Belarus	Swimming	2012–2024	Summer	M	21	1	1	17
3	Béatrice Hess	France	Swimming	1984–2004	Summer	F	20	5	0	25
4	Reinhild Moeller	Germany	Alpine skiing, Athletics	1980–2006	Winter, Summer	F	19	3	1	23
5	Sarah Storey	Great Britain	Swimming, Cycling	1992–2020	Summer	F	19	8	3	30
6	Michael Edgson[2]	Canada	Swimming	1984–1992	Summer	M	18	3	0	21
7	Jonas Jacobsson	Sweden	Shooting	1980–2020	Summer	M	17	4	9	30
8	Jessica Long	United States	Swimming	2004–2020	Summer	F	17	8	5	30
9	Roberto Marson	Italy	Athletics, Fencing,Swimming	1964–1976	Summer	M	16	7	3	26
10	Gerd Schoenfelder	Germany	Alpine skiing	1992–2010	Winter	M	16	4	2	22
11	Mike Kenny	Great Britain	Swimming	1976–1988	Summer	M	16	2	0	18
12	Zipora Rubin-Rosenbaum[3]	Israel	Athletics, Swimming, Wheelchair basketball, Table tennis	1964–1992	Summer	F	15	9	7	31
13	Heinz Frei	Switzerland	Athletics, Cycling, Cross-country skiing	1984–2020	Summer, Winter	M	15	8	12	35
14	Mayumi Narita	Japan	Swimming	1996–2004	Summer	F	15	3	2	20