Half-Middleweight (≤61 kilograms), Women

This event went strictly according to form. Great Britain’s Diane Bell had won the 1986 and 1987 World Championships, and was favored. She advanced to the final by winning two matches by ippon, where she met American Lynn Roethke, who Bell had defeated in the final of the 1987 Worlds. The final was close, but Bell again prevailed, this time by shido, after Roethke had once been warned for passivity. Bell would compete again at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics Games, and Roethke would also compete at the 1992 Olympics, but neither would come close to making the podium.