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TOKYO: Japanese judo icon Ryoko Tani insisted on Tuesday she had only herself to beat in Beijing after winning gold at seven world championships and two Olympics.
Tani is aiming for an unprecedented third straight title at the Beijing Games, which begin next month.
When asked about her rivals, the 32-year-old star, said: "I know I must come up with tactics against foreign players.
"But I've focused on improving myself and strictly following my own way of judo."
"I want to play fully to my own potential," she said during a break in the women's final pre-Olympic training camp at home.
A master of "seoinage" shoulder throws, Tani has reigned judo's lightest division, the women's under-48kg bantamweight, since winning her first world title in 1993, the year after taking silver at the Barcelona Olympics.
After narrowly losing to North Korea's Kye Sun-Hi in the final at the 1996 Atlanta Games. She struck her first Olympic gold four years later in Sydney before grabbing her second at Athens in 2004.
"I have considerably increased my number of techniques in four years," she said. "I have experienced a lot of things other than judo, which have expanded my potential as a human being."
Tani, who married professional baseball player Yoshitomo Tani in 2003, gave birth to a boy in late 2005 after skipping the world championships that year.
She then went on to inspire many Japanese professional women by claiming her seventh world championship gold last September after coming back from two years of maternity leave.
Tani beat Cuba's Yanet Bermoy in the final after earlier seeing off Frederique Jossinet of France and Romania's Alina Dumitru.
She has been selected for Beijing despite losing in the final of the national trials to younger judokas. But Japanese judo chiefs are betting on her gilt-edged track record.
"I may sound conceited if I say I have no limit," she said. "But it feels as if the road keeps going on for me."
The only person to win three Olympic judo titles in a row was Japan's Tadahiro Nomura in the under-60kg men's section, which he completed in Athens.
"Tani has developed fighting intuition and responds quickly," said women's head coach Nobutoshi Hikage. "She has the gold medal within her grasp."
In Athens, Japanese judokas won a record eight titles, including five women's, accounting for half the country's gold medal haul.
In Beijing, Japan's judo squad will be bolstered by two defending men champions and four defending women. - AFP/de
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