“I want to mention a few competitors who stood out for me, first. Today at -60kg the young Frenchman, Kelvin Ray, was very concentrated on his fights. Sweden’s -48kg world number one brought all-round judo from tachi-waza and ne-waza, although she clearly prefers her ground work and it gave her the advantage for most of the day. Even her warm-up was impressive, super focussed. The -66kg Georgian finalist has impressive judo but so does Otaboev (UZB), who met him in the final with his strong techniques and general control. Even with two shido on the board the UZB still found the energy and intelligence to throw his Azerbaijani opponent in their semi-final."
"At -60kg the number one seed, Imranov (AZE) was disqualified for head-diving and this is a real focus for the IJF in terms of education and keeping the competing community safe for the future. The Commission won’t tolerate it especially with young athletes who could lose their whole potential career with a mistake like this; safety must always come first."
"The -52kg gold medallist, Massimetti (ITA), was very good all-round and I noticed that many of these young ones are finding winning form by having focus on the ground too. Even though they are cadets and very young, they can still find tactics and have some tatami-based intelligence. The ones with confidence and self-control are really making an impact.
With the cadets you cannot always expect the best level of judo and sometimes they win and lose almost by coincidence. There is a lot of emotion for both winners and losers and those with more control, already developing an all-round style and mental composure, they are really stepping forward. Not so many won on the ground yesterday but so many won there today, using everything from armlocks to shime -waza and holds."
"It was good to see competitors from Mozambique, Senegal and Tunisia in Sarajevo, showing that the African countries are beginning to really compete at this age. We are happy to see them here. Through the IJF Academy we have seen that the activity in Africa is paying off a lot."
"While Africa is really stepping up, we now look forward to countries historically with fewer women on the circuit, improving those statistics in the coming years. Recently, in Konya in Turkiye, we saw many women arriving with their senior male counterparts but now this needs to happen at cadet level too.
Europe, as usual, are better than other continents with regard to numbers and also the consistency of high level judo, due to the number of judo events available, it affects the judo in a good way. However, on day two Asia, Oceania and Pan America all had judoka finish in the top 8. This is encouraging."
"The French team are very strong in cadets with their gripping, techniques, and effort to apply. This is consistent across all age categories and we see that their success at senior level is part of a much wider strategy and maybe the result of such strong development at the younger age."
"European cadet mixed team championship finalists, Ukraine, have arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina with a huge capacity for team spirit. They don’t give up, staying focussed on their work. Yesterday they had a gold medal and today there were good performances too. Despite a tragedy in their country, they can still find a great level. Maybe it is even medicinal for them to be here. They can catch a positive life with judo and so again we really see that judo is more than sport.”
Mr Huysuz has noticed so many noteworthy aspects of this stage of Sarajevo’s global tournament. It’s been a power-packed second day and with 4 more categories preparing for day 3, we expect more of the same.