KEY POINTS:
British judo finds itself on the mat after leading hope Craig Fallon's failure to win a medal for the second successive Olympics.
The sport has won only one in the past two Games and faces funding cuts unless one or more of the six remaining in the team can reach the podium.
It was hoped that the 25-year-old bantamweight from Wolverhampton, the former world and European champion, would end the drought with a pace-setting gold rush on the first day of action, but as in Athens four years ago he literally threw it away, suffering an ipon (judo's equivalent of a knockout) when ahead on points against an opponent he was expected to defeat, this time when he was within sight of a bronze.
Fallon had failed to get to grips either with himself or two of his five opponents, first the Austrian European champion Ludwig Paischer, whom he had beaten on the last five occasions, and then the Israeli Gal Yekutiel, who had lost all three of their previous fights.
It was not so much the losses but the manner of them which concern the British judo hierarchy, who undertook a sweeping review of the sport after the disappointments of Athens, restructuring the elite coaching set-up.
Fallon complained of feeling "tired and drained".
- AGENCIES
