Olympic silver medalist Hiroyasu Shimizu received a special award from his employer, NEC Corp., and announced that he would not undergo surgery for a sore lower back that may have cost him the gold medal at the just-concluded Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
"This is the first time that you've been injured in your athletic career and for this reason, this is why these Olympics have more meaning than Nagano," NEC President Koji Nishigaki said before a crowded auditorium at the company's headquarters in Tokyo.
Shimizu, who won the gold medal in the men's 500 meters speedskating event at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, took the silver medal by 0.03 of a second behind American Casey FitzRandolph at the Salt Lake Games after being troubled with a sore lower back since last October.