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Shūhei Nishida
Personal information
Native name	西田修平
Nationality	Japanese
Born	March 21, 1910; Nachikatsuura, Wakayama, Japan
Died	April 13, 1997 (aged 87); Tokyo, Japan
Alma mater	Waseda University
Height	1.76 m (5 ft 9 in)
Weight	61 kg (134 lb)
Sport
Sport	Athletics
Event	Pole vault
Medal record
Representing Japan
Olympic Games
Asian Games

Shuhei Nishida (西田修平, Nishida Shūhei, March 21, 1910 – April 13, 1997) was a Japanese Olympic athlete who competed mainly in the pole vault.^[1]

Nishida was born in what is now part of Nachikatsuura, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. He was a student of the Engineering Department at Waseda University, when selected as a member of the Japanese Olympic team for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where he won the silver medal in the pole vault event.^[1]

After graduation from Waseda University, he obtained a job at Hitachi. He subsequently participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, Germany where he repeated his performance winning a second silver medal in the same event tying with his friend and teammate Sueo Oe. When the two declined to compete against each other to decide a winner, Nishida was awarded the silver and Oe the bronze by decision of the Japanese team, on the basis that Nishida had cleared the height in fewer attempts.^[2] The competition was featured in a scene in the documentary Olympia, filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. On their return to Japan, Nishida and Oe famously had their Olympic medals cut in half, and had a jeweler splice together two new “friendship medals”, half in bronze and half in silver.^[1]^[3]^[4]

At the age of 41, Nishida won a bronze medal at the 1951 Asian Games. He remained active in sports all of his life, serving as a referee at events, and from 1959 as an honorary vice chairman of the Japan Association of Athletics Federations, and as a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee. In 1989, he was awarded the silver medal of the Olympic Order. Nishida died of heart failure in 1997 at the age of 87.^[1]