“First of all there seemed to be a lot of golden scores, maybe more than usual but these athletes know each other really well. There were a lot of tactical fights but also a lot of good throws. Despite the length of some fights, the quality was great. Seeing Deguchi back on a good track and in the final was fantastic. She used the tomoe-nage more than once and has shown that she is ready to be back at the top, recovering her former presence on the mats.
Shmailov really responded to the crowd and although we already know he is a big thrower, today he excelled at it, picking just the right moments to explode into his opponents. That standing seoi-nage, for example, was magnificent.
The Japanese came with great ne-waza. Koga, at -48kg, was strong on the ground but also tactically very aware. She dealt with Chinese, French and Mongolian opponents on the way to beating young Scutto in the semi-final. We saw her turn the French fighter, Vieu, to hold. It seems that one of the tactics is to give the opponent one leg, as if they can defend the final position but then they pin the top and release that leg easily. It’s an interesting play but is used quite often successfully by the Japanese.
Flicker was really sharp from the beginning of the day. He lost in the repechage but he came out with such positivity and really provided a show for the spectators. It was indicative of the attitude brought by all of the Israeli team and it feels good to be here with that energy.
At one point I was working on mat 3 but I was listening to Pupp (HUN) versus Primo (ISR) on another mat, taking very quick glances at what was going on. It was a hard and exciting fight with Pupp winning at the end of a long golden score, a total of over ten minutes on the mat. With Primo in the match the volume was high but so was the level.”
Mr Bilic has a VIP view, absolutely necessary for his role, not just being close to the judo but also being next to the Referee Commission.
“As always, the Commission had some hard decisions to make and without the current technology it would be so much harder. I see that they are really interrogating the footage from different angles and I believe the right decision is being made in every situation.”
Changing tack again, Mr Bilic moved in to discussing the final block, “In some events we find that in the final block athletes don’t want to take so many risks but here there is explosive, attacking judo right across the board. We can see that our biggest champions are prepared to take risks and this should feed the younger generations with a main course of inspiration.
Overall it has been a fantastic day of judo with perhaps a strange observation that the preliminaries, with such electric match-ups from the very beginning of the day, provided more explosive judo than the final block. That isn’t to say the judo wasn’t good, but with the gold medal at stake and the realisation that the big points matter a lot here, there was a different attitude from that of the morning session, except Shmailov. Shmailov was just throwing and throwing and throwing all day, with the clear goal to earn ippon and make the local people happy.”
There is much to celebrate on day one in Jerusalem, from Krasniqi’s 4th Masters gold to the attendance of such a vibrant crowd. Day two is approaching fast and we are looking forward to having just as much fun with the middle weights as we had with the lightest categories today.