Sunday, September 17, 2000
Judo News Online
TINY HERO WINS NATION'S HEART
ALLAN BARRED AFTER WIEGHT DISPUTE

Tiny hero wins nation's heart

The female icon of Japanese sport has done it at last by winning the Olympic title for the country that invented judo and regards it as their own.

If Ian Thorpe’s gold medals were greeted with a mixture of delight and relief by Australia, then the victory of Ryoko Tamura generated similar emotions in Japan. Her triumph was headline news in Tokyo yesterday, as newspapers and television stations greeted her win with uncharacteristic fervor.

The 10,000-capacity judo hall was packed with seemingly every Japanese person in the southern hemisphere, as spectators and more than 150 television cameramen and photographers struggled for access.

Judo is the only sport Japan has given to the Games, according it special status in that country. However, Tamura’s fame is founded on a newspaper cartoon strip, “Yawara-chan”, based partly on her life, in which a tiny girl once beat up thugs on the streets.

As a teenager, Tamura, her pig-tails kept in place by red bows, once routed five boys in a fracas. The cartoon is a curious interweaving of fact and fantasy.

Only 4ft 9½in tall and weighing barely 7st, bantamweight Tamura won four successive world titles in the 1990s but lost the last two Olympic finals. In 1996, in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport, she was beaten by a North Korean, who had only been given a wild-card entry. Japan went into mourning.

But on Saturday night, cheered by thousands of her countrymen and women, blowing whistles, waving flags and sporting clothing and bandanas decorated with Tamura’s name, she was at last victorious.

Before the contest, she is quoted to have said: "The best case is gold; the worst case is gold." In the final, she exploded into action after 14 seconds and hurled Lioubov Brouletova of Russia to the mat for ippon, the sport’s equivalent of a knock-out in boxing, with harai-goshi (a sweeping hip throw).

Tamura said afterwards: "I fought as if my life was at stake. I thought of all the people who have supported me and sent me so many letters and messages. This was their gold medal not just mine."

Tamura hopes to continue until the Athens Olympics. Many more episodes of the celebrated comic strip are still to come.

John Goodbody
The Times

Allan barred after weight dispute

A British judo medal prospect today narrowly failed to make the correct weight and was disqualified from competing after the official practice scales she had been using were found to have been sabotaged.

The British team immediately protested that Debbie Allan, a 25-year-old featherweight from Camberley whose sporting career has been underwritten with lottery money, had been unfairly handicapped in her frantic and unsuccessful three-hour struggle to get under the bodyweight limit of 52kg.

Allan, the 1999 European champion, exercised intensively, cut off most of her long hair and stripped naked on the scales, but still failed to make the limit by 50g, the weight of a small chocolate bar.

Michel Brousse, the International Judo Federation (IJF) spokesman, announced that the practice scales had been tampered with, giving the false impression that competitors were lighter than they actually were. All fighters are allowed two hours on the practice scales before the official weigh-in starts.

Brousse said: "At 5.10am Debbie Allan stepped on to the practice scales and complained that they were uneven. While they were recalibrated, it was discovered that someone had inserted tissue paper into the machinery, causing it to weigh slightly lighter than it actually was.”

It took at least 10 minutes for the scales to be corrected and when Allan, escorted by British team officials, remounted the scales, she was found to be 400g over the limit. Although she had already lost about 30 minutes, she then began running and exercising vigorously to lose weight before the official weigh-in, lasting the scheduled one hour, began at 7am.

Just before the time limit of 8am, Allan stepped on to the official scales but was found to be just over the limit and was barred from taking part in the day-long event.

Before leaving the Olympic village for a secret hideaway later in the day, she said: "I am very upset. I thought I was in easy reach of making the weight. I feel that I have let everyone down who has supported me.”

The British team management felt that her continued presence in the Village would damage the medal chances of the others in the close-knit judo team.

This is the first time since judo was introduced to the Olympic programme in 1964 that any British fighter has failed to make the weight. All the other competitors yesterday were within their correct category. The IJF is mystified how the scales were altered because they had been locked away and there was no evidence of a break-in.

Simon Clegg, the chief executive of the British Olympic Association, which has also helped Allan financially with her preparation, said: "We are extremely disappointed that this has happened and we will be questioning the British Judo Association closely on our return from the Games. Right now, we are focusing our minds on fully supporting the remaining judo competitors.”

Lesley-Anne Alexander, who chairs the BJA, said: "We have asked the organisers and the IJF to discover what happened. All the team and management are very upset.” The BJA will be conducting its own disciplinary inquiry after the Games.

John Goodbody and David Watts in Sydney
The Times