Anton Geesink, 76, Medalist Who Helped Popularize Judo.(Obituary)(Obituary).

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Anton Geesink, a 6-foot-6 Dutchman who stunned Japan when he defeated Japanese opponents to win the 1961 world judo championship and a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Games, died Aug. 27 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He was 76.

His death, at a hospital, was announced by the International Judo Federation.

In the 1961 world championships in Paris, Geesink, the European champion, defeated Koji Sone of Japan, the defending title holder.

That triumph, at the third judo world championship -- Japanese athletes had won both previous titles -- was a blow to Japan, where judo was developed as a form of self-defense in the 19th century.

''Japan took it as a reflection on the national honor when the world championship was won by a huge Hollander,'' Robert Trumbull, the chief of The New York Times's Tokyo bureau, wrote three years later, when Geesink was preparing to compete in Tokyo at the first Olympic Games to be held in Asia.

At Japan's behest, the 1964 Summer Games, formally opened by Emperor Hirohito, included judo as an Olympic sport for the first time. Nearly half a million Japanese men and 420 women had been formally graded for varying degrees of expertise in judo at the time. So it was no surprise when the Japanese won gold medals in judo's lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight divisions.

But Geesink, listed at 270 pounds, captured the prestigious open, or unlimited weight, class judo match. He took Japan's Akio Kaminaga, 50 pounds lighter, to the mat a little more than nine minutes into their encounter. That Olympic gold automatically gave Geesink a second world championship as well, and was another blow to Japan's self-image.

''Judo was not just a national sport, it symbolized the Japanese way -- spiritual, disciplined, infinitely subtle; a way in which crude Western brawn would inevitably lose to superior Oriental spirit,'' the British journalist Ian Buruma wrote in an article he later included in ''The Missionary and the Libertine'' (Random House, 2000), his book of reflections on the way the East and the West see each other.

''And here, in Tokyo, a big, blond foreigner had humiliated Japan in front of the entire world,'' Mr. Buruma pointed out. Jim Bregman, who won a bronze medal as a member of the United States judo team at the Tokyo Games, told The Los Angeles Times that the entire Japanese judo team wept in its locker room after Geesink's victory.

But Bregman said the Japanese had no cause to feel disgraced. He described Geesink as ''a technical genius, very powerful, very fast judo player of consummate skill in a very large frame.''

Antonius Johannes Geesink was born in Utrecht on April 6, 1934. He won the first of his 21 European championships in 1952. He captured a third world championship in 1965, in Rio de Janeiro, and retired two years later.

Geesink wrestled professionally in Japan in the 1970s. But he devoted most of his efforts to teaching and popularizing judo.

He was the education director of the International Judo Federation in the late 1980s and was awarded Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1997 for his contributions to judo.

Geesink was elected to the International Olympic Committee in 1987 and remained a member until his death. He was among 13 members investigated by the committee in connection with a vote-buying scandal arising from the Salt Lake City bid committee's ultimately successful campaign to have the I.O.C. award it the 2002 Games.

The I.O.C. issued a warning to Geesink to avoid appearances of a conflict of interest as a result of an unsolicited $5,000 check to a foundation bearing Geesink's name drawn from the personal account of Thomas K. Welch, who had been president of the Salt Lake bid committee.

Geesink is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son.

At a gathering of judo students at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan in 1972, Geesink's supreme confidence shone through. When a student suggested it wasn't always possible to grip an opponent in an ideal hold, Geesink bristled.

''You only become champion,'' he said, ''if you tell yourself: 'This man is nothing for me. I grip you the way I want.' ''

Source Citation
Goldstein, Richard. "Anton Geesink, 76, Medalist Who Helped Popularize Judo." New York Times 4 Sept. 2010: B8(L). General OneFile. Web. 23 Nov. 2010.
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