There is a chance that many people outside of Olympic historians have never heard the name Tommy Kono.
Google Doogle is making sure this never happens again and will always be remembered.
On Sunday, Google honored Kono on his 91st birthday with a doodle animation depicting clean and jerk, one of the more common weightlifting exercises.
Kono was placed in an internment camp during World War II at the age of 12, one of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans who were forced from their homes and held during the conflict.
He was released from the camp and enlisted in the United States Army in 1950.
Kono, considered one of the greatest weightlifters of all time, won two Olympic gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and the 1956 Games in Melbourne, and three Mr. Universe titles. He added a silver medal during the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
Kono was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame and the International Weightlifting Hall of Fame and died in 2016 at the age of 85.
Happy 91st birthday to Japanese-American weightlifting coach & athlete Tommy Kono 🇯🇵🇺🇸
— Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) June 27, 2021
Even to this day, Kono is the only weightlifter in history to hold worlds records in 4 different weight divisions 🏋️♀️#GoogleDoodle🎨 by guest artist Shanti Rittgers → https://t.co/60ftKH2eU9 pic.twitter.com/aSnAyMxZJ6