DIAZ FERNANDEZ Antonio Jose

General
RETIREMENT PLANS
He plans to retire from karate after competing at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. He says he considered retirement earlier in his career but decided to continue competing when the sport was added to the Olympic programme for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. "Basically, the time for which I have lengthened my sports career is for the Tokyo Games. Throughout my years of competing, I have had several moments when I have thought about retirement. But I think the Olympic Games, the most important sporting event, and especially happening in Japan, the land of karate, is the perfect place to end it [his career]." (efectococuyo.com, 24 Mar 2020, 20 Apr 2019; tokyo2020.org, 09 Jun 2020)

JAPANESE MOTIVATION
He considers Japan a special country for him and says it has served as extra motivation that the country will host the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. "One of the first dojos I trained with was owned by a Japanese master, Shoko Sato, who was the first to come to Venezuela. Then I remember my first trip to Japan in 1997, when I went to a championship in Okinawa where I was also training a few years later. In 2007, I met my main teacher in recent years, Yoshimi Inoue, who died in 2015. For many years I went to train with him in Tottori, a city in western Japan. This city is not very big so I could live closely to Japanese culture thanks to my teacher who defined himself as half Japanese and half Latin. Japan is a very special place for me." (tokyo2020.org, 09 Jun 2020)

DOJO AND FUTURE PLANS
He runs the Antonio Diaz Dojo, a karate training school in Caracas, Venezuela. He is also a certified strength and fitness coach, and says he plans to continue teaching at his dojo and working as a coach following his retirement from competitive karate. "Teaching is something I would like to continue spending time on in the future. I would also like to continue giving seminars and helping elite athletes from other countries. In 2018, I was helping the Hong Kong team at the Asian Games and it was a great experience." (Instagram profile, 19 Oct 2020; elnacional.com, 12 Feb 2020; tokyo2020.org, 09 Jun 2020)

OTHER ROLES
He serves as a member of the athletes commission of both the Venezuelan Olympic Committee [COV ] and the World Karate Federation [WKF]. (tokyo2020.org, 09 Jun 2020; insidethegames.biz, 19 Nov 2018)

In 2016 he became the karateka with most number of individual medals won at the world championships when he won his eighth medal in the form of bronze at the competition in Linz, Austria. (efectococoyo.com, 20 Apr 2019; SportsDeskOnline, 14 Apr 2020)