Monday, July 22, 1996
Gill's hunger misplaced
By JIM
O'LEARY
Executive Producer SLAM! Sports
ATLANTA -- After being picked up and tossed from the Olympics as some
overzealous bouncer might send a loudmouth onto the street, some men might go
out and drown their sorrows.
Nicolas Gill plans to stuff his face.
For four years Gill meticulously counted calories so he could remain
a middleweight and improve on the judo bronze medal he won at the 1992
Barcelona Olympics. He believed, wrongly, as it turned out, that conquering the
weight thing would lead to a bigger victory. Then he ran into a
couple of guys who treated Gill like one of his tossed salads.
A flip here, a turn there and one of Canada's top athletes is going
home without a medal.
"Ever since I first started doing judo I thought in 1996 would be the
year when I was at my best,'' said a dejected Gill, minutes after Germany's
Marko Spittka won the gold medal. "I thought I'd be at my peak right now.''
Instead Gill is heading for the chow line. That next time he fights,
it will be as a half-heavyweight. Spittka can go to Disneyland; Gill's headed
for Burger King.
The final blow came in a bout against Holland's Mark
Hutzinga that took less time than the pre-fight bows. The clock showed the bout
lasting five seconds. But that seemed generous. The second the referee gave the
go ahead, Hutzinga reached out, grabbed hold of Gill and hurled him onto his
back the way a farmer might execute an over-the-shoulder toss of a 50-pound bag
of potatoes.
The throw resulted in an ippon, judo's equivalent to a boxing
knockout.
"I didn't even have time to -- how do you say it? -- get a sweat,''
said the Montrealer. "He was waiting for me. It was obvious.''
Hutzinga's body slam got most of the post-bout attention, but Gill
was already out of contention for a gold or silver medal by the time he fought
Hutzinga. His real downfall had come hours earlier when he lost to Spittka.
The German's winning move was less forceful than Hutzinga's, more
ippon tuck than full body slam, but it was the throw that ended Gill's
four-year quest to improve on the bronze medal he'd won in Barcelona. It wasn't
a hard throw, but it was crushing.
It dropped Gill into a B pool, where the also-rans would knock each
other about to see who would get the bronze.
When Spittka put him to the mat, Gill looked dumbfounded. He stayed
on his knees, staring straight ahead with an expression of disbelief, until the
ref signalled for him to get up. The end came quick. Gill seemed to be on the
attack and then suddenly he was on his back.
"I had him off balance,'' said Gill. "I think he just reacted to get
out of my attack. He just turned around and caught me.''
There might have been only one person in the building who wasn't
completely surprised. Gill's dad had an uneasy feeling about how his son was
going to do after they spoke for half an hour Sunday morning.
"My feeling was that there was something puzzling him'' said Denis
Gill. "But he didn't feel like talking about it."
Nicolas said he didn't know what his dad might have been talking
about. He wasn't puzzled,he said, just "very nervous and very anxious.''
"Today has been on my mind a long time, since Barcelona,'' he said.
"I guess I wasn't as sharp as I coul have been.''
Immediately after being eliminated by Hutzinga, Gill charged off to
to a private area beneath the stands to commisserate with his coach. But he
soon returned to face a barrage of questions in both official languages. His
1992 Olympic medal, followed by top three-placings at recent world
championships, have made him a prominent Quebec personality.
"I was trying to figure out what happened (against Hutzinga),'' said
Gill. Then he made a half-hearted attempt to smile, recalling his five-second
finale. "I didn't need a long time.''
The question Gill will take with him from Atlanta is whether he erred
terribly in deciding to remain a middleweight after his bronze in Barcelona. He
is among the tallest fighters in the middleweight class and could comfortably
carry the extra pounds of a half-heavyweight. Two years ago, he contemplated
making the move but decided against it because he wanted to be remembered as a
gold-medal middleweight.
That decision wasn't made in five seconds, but in the end it probably
hurt Gill more than anything Mark Hutzinga did to him yesterday.
