Craig Fallon

Having won the silver medal in the under-60kg class at the 2001 European Junior Judo Championships, Craig Fallon went one better at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games by taking the gold medal. The medals kept coming for the Wolverhampton-based judoka, and he won silver medals at both the European and World Championships in 2003. An injured shoulder at the Worlds probably cost him a gold medal. He did, however, win the prestigious Tournoi de Paris that year, and became the first British male since its launch in 1971 to win a title.

Having competed at the 2004 Olympics, Fallon enjoyed his greatest moment at Cairo in 2005, when he won the World title to become only the third British man, after Neil Adams and Graeme Randall, to be world champion. After capturing the European title the following year, he joined Adams (1982) as the only other British male to simultaneously hold both titles. Fallon also won the World Cup at Warszawa (Warsaw) in 2005. A second Olympic appearance followed in 2008, after winning the World Cup qualifying event at Birmingham the previous year.

Fallon retired from competitive judo in 2011, and later took up coaching. Following a two-year spell in Austria, he returned to Britain to take up a post with the Welsh Judo Association, just a few months before his untimely death in 2019. Fallon was found dead in July 2019, after going missing following a walking trip on The Wrekin, a well-known Shropshire landmark and beauty spot, close to Fallon’s Telford home, and not far from where Dr. William Penny Brookes, founder of the Much Wenlock Olympics, was born (and died).