Fiamme Gialle is a professional team within the Italian military police and the head coach is Antonio Ciano, a judoka who fought his own world championships back in 2009, in Rotterdam. Hard work, team spirit and the internal fire to win characterise the whole team and in Budapest this has been a recipe for success. Antonio Ciano was in the hotseat for both champions and now reflects on the day 6 result.
“In the final it was all about tactics and how we managed them between us. Before the match, we planned the tactics to be able to open the situation for Alice to apply her tokui-waza but Olek was so well prepared and so our plan wasn’t as positive as we though and it couldn’t work. We had to work differently and change the mentality.”
There was a moment in the fight when Bellandi seemed blocked and couldn’t find her rhythm. Ciano had to analyse it and make a new plan, in the moment, an instant decision to change tactics. “I know she has pride and really wants to win. I said ‘if you want to win, you must stand up but if you want to lose just go, we go home.’ When they stopped for a minute for medical treatment, I had to make her look at me. ‘You can’t lose this match, you will remember it for all your life. Remember your last match against Wagner, another German athlete, last year, with the same thing? Not now! You are doing the same but you can win this time if you don’t do the same. Come on, choose! she looked at me and said ‘ok’ and her face said she understood. I told her technical things too, ‘Don’t throw left, only right.’ Olek was waiting for left attacks and it was dangerous for Alice to get penalties for false attacks.”
How have you reached this point of deep understanding with her?
“She has a lot of faith, this is first. We live every day together between home and the police training centre, when she trains twice per day. We have Scutto and others there. We speak about all things and she knows me as much as I know her. Our roles are clear too; she knows I am the coach and she is the athlete and that together we are complete. The secret is the understanding. It was only at the beginning of 2025 that she told me she wanted to win this. With trust and planning and faith, we worked together to reach this point."
"To be honest, she didn’t want to plan in advance or to compete before we came to Hungary. I thought she needed something else first but she didn’t want it. She said she wanted to start focusing once she arrives in Budapest. It was really tough for me to agree so I had to do all the planning behind her and make sure she could train how she wanted to. I believed she needed focus sooner but she was adamant. In the end, I learned to work a different way with her. She taught me a lot. She said she would be ready and she was ready! She found the fire for herself and this is the right way.”
The athlete-coach relationship is a huge part of elite sport, especially at the high performance end of the spectrum. Bellandi and Ciano have got it right, Scutto and Ciano have got it right. One week, 1 coach, 2 world champions! Wow!
