“It is wonderful to be here again, in the beautiful city of Zagreb,” said Lisa Allan, International Judo Federation (IJF) Events Director. “On behalf of IJF President Marius L. Vizer, I want to thank the Croatian Judo Federation and the local authorities for the enormous work done by all. We ask the athletes to respect the sanitary rules to avoid new infections of Covid and we recommend the use of masks.”
For his part, the Secretary General of the Croatian Judo Federation, Hrvoje Lindi, spoke on behalf of their president, Sanda Corak and expressed gratitude for "the support of Marius Vizer and the Croatian government, as well as that of the city of Zagreb."
Let's go now with the athletes, which is who it is about. There will be 477, 282 men and 195 women, from 67 countries. There will be three tatami and the tournament will begin at 9am local time on Friday and at 10am on Saturday and Sunday, with the final block at 5pm each day. What we are discovering and it is not a surprise, is that it is clear that there will be a world championships soon and that the tournaments already count towards Olympic qualification. Little by little, the great champions are coming out of their placid rest.
Regarding the names and surnames, we want to highlight some details that interest us, starting with the reappearance of Uta Abe. In Budapest it was her brother who gave signs of life, with one of the eight gold medals won by the Japanese team. Now it is the turn of the sister, also an Olympic champion and also missing from the map since the Tokyo Games.
In her category, -52kg, she will have as her most serious rival the Kosovar Distria Krasniqi, Olympic champion at -48kg and wanting to carve out a niche here. It will be necessary to go over the Israeli Gefen Primo, the Swiss Fabienne Kocher and the Spanish Ana Pérez Box but you can be sure that all of them will look closely at the Japanese.
Another who reappears is Christa Deguchi. In Budapest it was her arch-rival and compatriot, as well as world champion, Jessica Klimkait, who participated in her first World Judo Tour tournament this year. It's now up to Deguchi, as if each wanted to avoid the other before the World Championships in Tashkent. Speaking of avoiding, the same could be said of Frenchman Teddy Riner and Czech Lukas Krpaleck. Riner smashed everyone in Hungary a few days ago and Krpaleck wants to do the same in Croatia after being inactive for many months. The double Olympic champion will be one of the highlights of the tournament.
There is more, in the opposite direction. Georgian Lasha Shavdatuashvili and Azerbaijani Hidayat Heydarov may repeat their final from last Saturday at -73kg, with the permission of another Azerbaijani, Rustam Orujov. On the last occasion Heydarov was far superior.
Another detail will be the possible reunion between the Georgian Tato Grigalashvili and the Azerbaijani Saeid Mollaei in the -81kg category. Those two have not seen each other since Tokyo.
Finally, the world champion at -70kg, Barbara Matic, will be the clear favourite for being at home.
All this is a mixture of data and theory, to present the event, open debates and avoid any chance of staleness. Soon, in just a few hours, reality will put everyone in their place, beginning with us. The only thing we are sure of and we would put our hands in the fire to show it, is that there will be a lot of good judo, the type we like, the one that makes noise.