Rusty Kanokogi, an American woman known as the 'mother of women's judo' for her efforts to make the sport an Olympic event, died at a New York hospital, her family said. She was 74. She had been suffering from multiple myeloma, a cancer of white blood cells, her family said.

Born in Coney Island, Brooklyn, in 1935, she practiced judo with men. She then moved to Japan in the early 1960s to train at the Kodokan, the traditional Japanese sport's spiritual home in Tokyo.