A huge cry of freedom, a deafening cry to exorcise the present. Austria and Germany have said enough; enough of sadness and desolation. The day before the International Judo Federation announced the return of the World Judo Tour, the two countries celebrated the resurgence of our sport with a training camp and a friendly tournament, a team match, a fully-fledged ippon against the coronavirus.
Austria team, courtesy from "Judo Austria/Schoen"

Sabrina Filzmoser tells us the story. The Austrian was there and participated, even getting injured. These are her words.

“All went well here, Austria’s training camp together with Germany has been an awesome opportunity for everybody to get back to a somewhat ‘normal’ rhythm, with testing, following prepared protocols and rules.

We feel really lucky and privileged to get such an opportunity, while others around the world are struggling to even get back on to the tatami.

The friendly competition between Austria and Germany has been well organised and Austrian TV ensured it was a high quality project.

Germany team, courtesy from "Judo Austria/Schoen"

While there had been many injuries just before, also many of us had not had the best possibilities to get into a high level competition mode, as we would have wished to, because we‘ve had three positive Covid cases just one week before, followed by a strict quarantine. There was a huge chance of cancellation, but our federation and the new president, Martin Poiger, gave all of their possible effort and energy!

Austria-Germany friendly tournament, courtesy from "Judo Austria/Schoen"

Somehow everything went well and we managed to make the competition happen. Massive thanks to our German neighbors for coming over during this challenging time. They were awesome and also really eager to fight the first match and to train with a foreign country, after 6 months in off-mode.

The young guns gave everything in this competition, so there were a lot of nice surprises. We lost 5:7, but the result didn’t show how happy everybody felt to be able to fight for real.

JUDO IS BACK! That’s what really counts. Friendship is more than a thousand words can tell you, in this case!”

Photos: Austrian Judo Federation

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