Italian Olympic Champions: Ezio Gamba (1980)

Going into the 1980 Moscow Olympics, there were two clear favorites: Great Britain's Neil Adams and Italy's Ezio Gamba. Up to that point, they had fought each other four times and the record was 2:2.

Adams had won their first meet-up at the 1977 European Junior Championships in Berlin. Their next match was in the 1978 European Team Championships in Paris, and Gamba won that one. After that, Adams beat Gamba in the final of the 1979 Europeans in Brussels. They met again in the semifinal of the 1979 World Championships, where Gamba emerged triumphant.

Gamba very nearly didn't make it to Moscow. The USA had initiated a boycott of the Moscow Games because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Many of the USA's allies did not send athletes. This included Japan, South Korea and West Germany. Italy did not boycott the event but forbade members of the army from participating. Gamba left the army and went to Moscow alone. He was the only Italian judoka to do so.

Gamba's Moscow Olympic u71kg final was against twice European champion, Neil Adams of Great Britain. The contest was an extremely close fought match with Gamba winning the gold medal by a Yusei-Gachi (3 points) decision. 

Adams had a relatively easy run in the preliminary rounds, defeating his first two opponents by ippon. Gamba, in contrast, had a tougher time and barely scrapped through his second match, against the Frenchman Christian Dyot, winning by decision.

In the semifinals, Adams looked dominant as ever, defeating the tough East German Karl-Heinz Lehmann with an armlock. Gamba showed that he was equally skilled on the ground, holding down his Mongolian opponent Ravdan Davaadali for ippon.

The final was a tough battle, with neither player able to throw the other. On the ground, they seemed evenly match too, with Adams unable to catch Gamba with his famous armlock. In the end, it went to a decision with Gamba winning the hantei, probably because he was seen to have been more on the offensive during their seven-minute match.

This was the first ever Olympic judo gold medal for Italy.

At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Gamba again reached the u71kg final but lost to Byeong-Keun Ahn of South Korea by a koka (3 points). Gamba twice reached the World final but never won a gold medal. He also won four medals in the European championships between 1979 and 1986 with one being a gold medal. Besides being renowned as an Olympic champion, Gamba was enlisted as coach to the Russian team and became very successful after retiring from competition and, so far, the team has won 3 Olympic gold medals, a silver and bronze by 7 judoka. In 2013, Gamba was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship for his outstanding contribution to the development of judo in the Russian Federation.