DOB - 21 November 1967
COUNTRY - Japan
WEIGHT - U71kg & U78kg

Favourite Techniques

Ippon-seoi-nage
Seoi-nage
Koshi-guruma
Sode-tsuri-komi-goshi
Ko-uchi-makikomi
Tomoe-nage

Toshihiko Koga is one of the most innovative and exciting fighters the world has ever seen. What sets him apart from other competitors is the amazing range of throws that he invented which have since become accepted as part of modern judo. Think of one handed Seoi-nage and somersaulting Sode-tsuri-komi-goshi and you think of Koga. Whilst other great traditional Japanese fighters seemed predictable, if unstoppable, Koga was both unorthodox and brilliant.

Koga began judo at the age of 6 with his elder brother Motohiro under the guidance of their father Toshiro. It was Motohiro who taught the young Toshihiko his tokui-waza, standing Ippon-seoi-nage. Motohiro had become a good competitor and Toshihiko longed for the same success that his elder brother had had using Ippon-seoi. Motohiro was an exacting teacher and Toshihiko learned the technique quickly, partly because he didn’t want to be shouted at any longer! Motohiro had since progressed to become an accomplished international fighter, but in 1985 both brothers came to a crossroads that would change their lives forever. Both entered a tournament held at the Kodokan, and both made it to the final. Toshihiko unexpectedly emerged victorious, beating his brother with Juji-gatame. Immeadiatley after the fight Toshihiko remembers Motohiro saying to him, ‘over to you, little brother’, and he effectively then abandoned competitive judo to become a high school teacher.

From this point onwards Koga stepped out of his brother’s shadow and emerged as a strong international competitor. In 1986 Koga won his first major international tournament, the Junior World Championships in Rome, obliterating everyone with Ippon-seoi in the process. The same year he also threw the formidable American Mike Swain with the same technique to win the Kano cup. But it was also at this time that he badly injured his right elbow which forced him to adapt and change his fighting style. In his video, Koga - A New Wind, he explains: I worked to develop techniques in such a way that they didn't put stress on my elbow. Such techniques involved not using the conventional grips and approaches and throwing from unusual angels or throwing one handed. I hoped that by doing techniques that my opponent didn't expect I would be able to make up for the fact that I couldn't use my elbow in my judo

Using these adapted techniques that have now become his trademark, Koga became World Champion at -71kg two years later for the first time, throwing North Korean Chang-Su Lee with an incredible one-handed Seoi-nage in the semi-final, and defeating Swain in the final.
Back in Japan he took the amazing decision to enter the All-Japan Championships, an open weight competition despite weighing only 71kg, and astonished everyone by making it into the final, defeating opponents twice his size with superior speed and tactics. It finally took the world open weight champion Naoya Ogawa to beat him.

Barcelona provided Koga with his greatest moments. In 1991 he won his second World Championships with another display of virtuoso judo, defeating Ruiz, the Spanish home favourite, in the final. It was also there, in 1992, that he became Olympic Champion. Incredibly he won the Games carrying a knee injury that practically prevented him walking let alone fighting. Immediately, prior to his first fight he had an anti-inflammatory solution injected into his knee six times. This, together with pure guts and determination helped him endure the tournament and to eventually beat the Hungarian Bertalan Hajtos on flags in the final.

After Barcelona he retired from competition for a couple of years, but returned fresh and motivated at the higher weight of -78kg to win the 1995 World Championships in front of his home crowd in Makuhari with the maximum 5 ippon wins. The next year, in Atlanta, he narrowly failed to take a second Olympic title, loosing to Djamel Bouras of France, whom he’d beaten the year before in the Semi-Final of the 1995 worlds, by a decision.