SYDNEY -- The closest thing to Kosei Inoue's heart as he took to the winner's podium Thursday night was not that he had won Olympic gold but that he had fulfilled his mother's dying wish.

Underneath his judo jacket he clutched a photograph of his late mother, Kazuko, who died in June last year, aged 51.

And as he was crowned Olympic under-100-kg champion, instead of the precious medal, it was the photograph that was hoisted high in the hands of the reigning world champion.

"I wanted to dedicate this win to my mother -- this is for her," he stated.

He had honored the woman who, he later explained, told him on her deathbed that his dream of winning the Olympic gold was her dream too.

"To me, she was the best mother in the world and I wanted the world to see her tonight," he said.

Inoue helped Japan eclipse its Atlanta haul of Olympic gold with a moment of grace and precision that left the Sydney crowd in awe.

The throw he executed to defeat Canada's Nicholas Gill in the final and bring home his nation's fourth gold medal of the 2000 Olympics was something of beauty -- more like ballet than fighting.

Inoue curled his leg inside Gill's and stepped back; he did it a second time and then, on the third, flipped the two-time Pan American champion off his feet, turned him over in the air and laid him down on the mat for a perfectly timed "uchi-mata" ippon.

The eight-time national champion -- who trains with his father -- and Canada's Gill had been locked on a penalty apiece almost three minutes into an evenly fought bout.

It was fitting that Inoue won before a relative of Jigoro Kano, the inventor of judo, whom Inoue would acknow- ledge later.

The 22-year-old Tokai University student, bursting with pride, shook hands with his opponent and stopped twice to greet with Japanese fans as he left the Sydney Exhibition Center.

"I went all out for victory in every match. There was no holding back," Inoue said.

"I had fought him (Gill) two or three times before in practice matches. I knew from that experience it would be a close match."

Inoue's win kept the Japanese team in the race for the five golds it aims to bring back from the Olympics after fellow world champion Noriko Anno crashed out of the women's under 78-kg competition.

Inoue had been the overwhelming favorite in his class and won all three of his first fights convincingly by ippon.

In his semifinal bout with Italy's Luigi Guido, a "waza-ari" scored on a throw combined with three penalties against Guido to give him an outright win by ippon.

Guido went down to Russia's Iouri Stepkine in one of the bronze-medal bouts. Atlanta under-95 kg bronze medalist Stephanie Traineau of France had to settle for bronze after battling through the repechage to defeat Ariel Zeevi of Israel, who upset Barcelona under-95-kg Olympic champion Anatal Kovacs of Hungary in the second round.

The women's gold medal went to China's Lin Tang who upset double European champion Celine Lebrun of France in a controversial judge's decision. Tang won the vote of two of the three judges after the clock ran out with the pair even on two penalties each.

Italy's Emanuela Pierantozzi, who knocked Anno out in the first round, suffered a defeat at the hands of Belgium's Heidi Rakels. But she went on to stamp herself as a giant killer, overcoming 1995 world champion Diadenys Luna-Castellanos of Cuba for a bronze medal.

Rakels went down to Tang in the semifinal and then Romania's Marcela Simona Richter in the other bronze medal bout.

Yoshida resting

SYDNEY (Kyodo) Judo world champion Hidehiko Yoshida, whose Olympic medal quest ended with a dislocated elbow on Wednesday, has returned to the athletes village with his elbow in a cast and is under medical care there, team offi Yoshida, 31, spent Wednesday night in hospital after dislocating his right elbow in a third-round match at the Sydney Olympics judo competition in the afternoon.

Yoshida injured his elbow trying to avoid being thrown to his back against Brazilian Carlos Honorato.