Half-Heavyweight (≤100 kilograms), Men

The heavy favorite was Japan’s Kosei Inoue. He was the 1999 World Champion, 1997 and 1999 World Cup champion, 1998 Asian Games champion, and 1997 Kodakan Cup champion. He won the gold medal easily, and Wallechinsky, in The Complete Book of the Olympics, has called it “the most dominating performance in Olympic history.” He won four of five matches by ippon, one by waza-ari and spent only 7:43 to win those matches. His final opponent was Nicolas Gill (CAN), who was well-known but no match for Inoue, losing by ippon in 2:09. Inoue would continue to compete, posting one of the greatest records of any judoka. Through 2008, he would win two more Worlds (2001/2003), four more World Cups, seven All-Japan victories, and two further victories at the Kodakan Cup. He retired after failing to make the 2008 Japanese Olympic team. Inoue married well-known Japanese actress Aki Higashihara. Gill had won a bronze medal in middleweight at the 1992 Olympics, won three medals at the World Championships, and had four international titles in his career – 1995 and 1999 Pan-American Games, 2002 Commonwealth Games, and the lesser-known 2001 Francophone Games.