Bryant runs true to form of a flawed effort

Karina Bryant ran true to form in the women's heavyweight division, the European champion and former world junior champion winning only one bout, against the Senegalese Adja Marieme Diop.

But it was not her form that the defeat ran true to, for it was only five months ago that the 22-year-old claimed her European title in Poland. Rather her performance was all too true to Great Britain's form in these games. There were 10 British fighters in Sydney and the bald statistics tell a story as sorry as that of Atlanta four years ago.

On the credit side Kate Howey won silver, maintaining the trend she set at the Barcelona games eight years ago. Bronze there has been followed by a stream of medals since. Embarrassingly, though, the 27-year-old won almost as many fights in her afternoon here as the remainder of the British team put together.

Five fighters this week, including the reigning world champion at 81kg, Graeme Randall, scored a single victory. Three team members did not even record that; and one, Debbie Allan, did not reach the mat.

The comparison with Atlanta is compelling. The mood in the British camp was stony after that tournament, in which no medals were won and only a single fighter, Nicola Fairbrother in the 52 kg class, reached a medal bout.

It was a messy week there in which affiliations were tested. Neil Adams, the coach, was drawn into a controversy when his coaching relationship with an American, Jimmy Pedro, hardly encouraged the British fighter Danny Kingston, who met him in the second round and lost.

The chairman of the British Judo Association, George Kerr, had talked up the chances of the team then and changes had to come when the BJA carried out its post-mortems. A new chairman, Lesley Anne Alexander, was elected and new coaches were appointed.

There were 13 fighters from 14 divisions in Atlanta. Take out the best fighters at each tournament - Howey this week and Fairbrother in 1996 - and the statistics almost match. In Atlanta nine fighters scored a single win, three had no wins. Embrace the Allan factor, and Sydney looks worse.

Allan had qualified for the Olympics by an act of brazen courage in the world championships at Birmingham, winning a bout with one arm rendered useless. To come into this event 600g overweight was unprofessional. All the alleged tampering of scales was irrelevant, the responsibility lay with Allan, her coach and the British team to ensure she was properly prepared.

With the amount of lottery funding available, for the team not to have its own calibrated scales was like Redgrave leaving his oar behind. For Allan and her coach not to know precisely how her weight was vacillating was the equivalent of Redgrave leaving his boat behind. And he would just not do that.