Radomir Kovačević

On 15 June 2006, after eighteen months of fighting cancer, Kovačević died in Belgrade. He was cremated and his ashes were divided into two urns. One stayed in Belgrade while the other one was taken to Tōkai University in Tokyo.

Starting in the late 1990s, Kovačević held a three-to-four-hour-long Judo class on Saturdays at the Spartak Judo Club, in Forest Hills. Despite the fact that the classes were usually between three and seven people full they were effective in building and attracting champion judo players.

In 1980, he became a bronze-medalist at the Moscow Olympics. He was a coach at The Dwight School in Manhattan and trained many champions in various sports including wrestling, tennis, basketball, and sailing, among others.

In the summer of 1971, after wrestling practice, Kovačević had decided to change sports yet again, when he saw small Japanese man "throwing people like paper airplanes", as he put it, at a local Judo club. The same day he resigned from his wrestling club and joined the judo club. After training for six months at that club he managed to throw the Japanese on one knee. On the spot, the Japanese offered to send him to Japan to study judo.

Radomir Kovačević (20 March 1954 in Drvar — 14 June 2006 in Belgrade) was a Yugoslav Olympic judoka and coach. He participated in three Olympics (Montreal, Moscow, and Los Angeles) and was an Olympic medalist. He was well known in judo circles and was close friends with world-famous Japanese judo champion Yasuhiro Yamashita. He was a member of the NYC 2012 Olympic Bid Committee.

Radomir Kovačević was born in Drvar, Bosnia on 20 March 1954. His father was a World War II veteran. Kovačević grew up in and began practicing sports in Drvar. He started Track and Field in 1967, at the age of thirteen. By age fifteen he tried basketball, but said "I was very angry because regardless of how good I was, my opponent always scored."