For a minute it looked like Nicolas Gill and Barcelona all over again.

 Canadian undefeated at judo.

 Two wins from the gold.

 One win from a bronze or silver.

 While media men rushed to the scene, Keith Morgan of Calgary had started to dream the dream.

 "I believed I'd be on the podium," the 90-kilogram class competitor said. "I believed I'd win a medal. I didn't know what colour, but I thought I was going to win one.

 "It feels awful. I lost my spunk. It's hard to explain. I'm pretty disappointed. Now it's going to be a couple of years of bad sleeping."

 Eight years ago Morgan he was inspired by Gill.

 "I was in my first year on the national team,'' he said of his surprise bronze that was Canada's first medal in Barcelona. "That was one of the most incredible moments. It was a shocker for Canada."

 Morgan thought he was going to pull off another shocker.

 "I don't know what happened," he said after suddenly falling apart in both the semi-final and the bronze-medal matches.

 "Maybe it was the break," Morgan said of the 21/2 hours prior to the evening finale at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre.

 "Physically I felt great. It was something mental. I made one mistake. When I was fighting for the bronze I was still thinking about what happened to me in the semi-final.

 "Technically I gave away my position in the bronze-medal match.''

 The semi-final was against Mark Huizinga of the Netherlands, the man who knocked Gill out of the medals in Atlanta.

 Win and Morgan was guaranteed silver and a shot at gold.

 It was even or the first half of the five-minute match and then ...

 "Small mistake,'' coach Hiroshi Nakamura said. "Bang. You're finished."

 That left him against Ruslan Mashurenko of Ukraine for the bronze. He lasted 50 seconds.