Incredibly long winning streaks come as natural to Saori Yoshida as enjoying ice cream cones on hot summer days for the rest of us.
For the record, freestyle wrestler Yoshida's 58-match winning streak came to an end on Sunday at the World Cup meet in Tokyo. Russia's Valeria Zholobova, just 19 years old, was the better grappler in their match. For anyone else, 58 straight wins would seem like an out-of-this-world accomplishment. For Yoshida, however, the bar is set so high, that a loss, any loss, is a jaw-dropping, stop-the-presses shocker.
"Going to London will mean nothing if I don't three-peat, so I have to fix the problems which need addressing," Yoshida was quoted as saying by Kyodo News after Sunday's defeat at Yoyogi National Gymnasium.