Cláudio Mitsuhiro Kano (18 December 1965 – 1 July 1996) was a Japanese Brazilian table tennis player who helped popularize the sport in Brazil and "spearheaded Brazilian table tennis in the 1990s".

He went on to win five more golds, three silvers, and two bronze at later Pan American Games.

[2][3] At the 1987 World Table Tennis Championships held in New Delhi, Kano reached the round of 16, one of the best results in Brazil's history in the tournament, equaling Ubiraci Rodrigues da Costa, known as Biriba, who fell in the round of 16 in 1961, a result only surpassed by Hugo Calderano later, in 2021.

[4][5] Kano also achieved two impressive results at the Table Tennis World Cup: he placed sixth in the ITTF World Cup, in Macau, in 1987, and in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1989.

[7][8] There were only 18 days left before the opening of the Atlanta Olympic Games (1996), in which Kano was to participate as one of the favorites for the gold medal, when Kano was the victim of a traffic accident in São Paulo.