Kanokogi, mother of women's judo, dies at 74+

NEW YORK, Nov. 22 Kyodo -
Rusty Kanokogi, an American woman known as the ''mother of women's judo'' for
her efforts to make the sport an Olympic event, died Saturday at a New York
hospital, her family said. She was 74.

She had been suffering from multiple myeloma, a cancer of white blood cells,
her family said.
Born in Coney Island, Brooklyn, in 1935, she practiced judo with men. She then
moved to Japan in the early 1960s to train at the Kodokan, the traditional
Japanese sport's spiritual home in Tokyo.
From the mid-1970s, her focus shifted from competition to coaching and she made
efforts to finance the first women's judo world championships in New York in
1980.
She also lobbied for women's judo to debut as a demonstration sport in the 1988
Seoul Olympics and become an official entry at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
Kanokogi was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, by
the Japanese government in November 2008 for her work in creating U.S. national
and Olympic competitions for women's judo.
Her husband, Ryohei Kanokogi, from Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture, is also a
judo practitioner.
==Kyodo
2009-11-22 21:29:35