Kenzo Nakamura

Kenzo Nakamura ( Japanese 中 村 兼 三 , Nakamura Kenzo , born October 18, 1973 in Fukuoka Prefecture ) is a former Japanese judoka . He was Olympic champion in 1996 and world champion in 1997 in lightweight.

Career

The 1.78 m tall Kenzo Nakamura won the 1995 Universiade in Fukuoka. Three months later he won the Asian Championships in New Delhi by beating the South Korean Kwak Dae-sung in the final . At the beginning of 1996 he won the Tournoi de Paris .

At the Olympic Games in Atlanta he defeated his first three opponents prematurely through Ippon: the Austrian Thomas Schleicher , the Algerian Abdelhakim Harkat and the German Martin Schmidt . In the semifinals against the Mongolian Khaliuny Boldbaatar he won through a penalty for the Mongolian (keikoku). In the final, Kenzo Nakamura met the South Korean Kwak Dae-sung and won by referee decision (yusei-gachi).

The following year Nakamura defeated the German Udo Quellmalz in the quarter-finals of the World Championships in Paris and the Portuguese Guilherme Bentes in the semifinals . With his final victory over the Frenchman Christophe Gagliano , he won the world title. At the Asian Games in 1998 in Bangkok he reached the final, but was defeated there by the Mongol Khaliuny Boldbaatar. In 2000 he won the title at the Asian Championships again. At the Olympic Games in Sydney he defeated the Romanian Claudiu Baştea and the Poland Jarosław Lewak in the first two rounds . In the quarterfinals he was defeated by the South Korean Choi Yong-sin and in the round of hope he lost to Jimmy Pedro from the United States. In the end, Nakamura was in ninth place.

In 2001, Kenzo Nakamura switched to light middleweight, the weight class up to 81 kilograms. He won the Tournoi de Paris again in this weight class in 2001 . At the 2001 World Championships in Munich, he lost to the Estonian Aleksei Budõlin in the semi-finals and to the Swiss Sergei Aschwanden in the battle for a bronze medal . In 2002 he became team world champion with the Japanese men's team.

Kenzo Nakamura's brothers Yukimasa Nakamura and Yoshio Nakamura were also world judo champions.

Web links

• Kenzo Nakamura in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Tournament results at judoinside.com

Footnotes

1. ↑ Asian Championships 1995 at judoinside.com
2. ↑ Volker Kluge : Olympic Summer Games. Chronicle IV. Seoul 1988 - Atlanta 1996. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-328-00830-6 . P. 755
3. ↑ Match balance at judoinside.com
4. ↑ Asian Games 1998 at judoinside.com