Midland Under 20

I attended the Midlands u20 age banded competition at Walsall.  I was fighting in the -46 weight group.
My first fights was an ippon win against Kieran Kelly (Zodiac).  My second fight was a tough one against Dominin Reily (Sportif) which I won by Ippon in Golden Score.  In the final I beat Jack Murphy (Pro Judo) to win the Gold Medal.

Results

Derbyshire Podium Athlete

I have been nominated and selected as one of the 2012 Derbyshire Podium Athletes.  With this I have also received £200 funding for the coming year.  This will help with my training costs.

Matsuru Dutch Espoir, The Netherlands

This year was my fourth time at this competition. In the last three years the best I had done was a fifth place and I normally don't fight very well in this event. I had trained hard over Christmas and again did the Rotterdam training camp at De-Korte judo club and then the ETD camp at Sheffield. I felt like I was on form coming into this years competition. There were 36 fighters in my weight group, and this was my first year in the new under 17 age band. All the best fighters from The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium were at the event as well as fighters from France, Denmark, Poland, Hungary and Great Britain.

Luka Stoikov (The Netherlands) First Fight

I had a good draw for my first fight but I was slow getting going and the fight went the full 4 minutes and I won by Wazari

Jorre Verstraeten (Belgium) Second Fight

Jorre is a great fighter and won the Belgium Championships in 2011 at -38. Jorre had beaten me in this event last year. It was a very tough fight but I caught him with a drop sode for wazari and won the fight to get into the next round. I knew that Jorre was fighting well as he went on to win Bronze medal beating both Jens Melawany and Mathijs van Harten.

Rutger Visser (The Netherlands) Third Fight

Rutger is also a top Dutch fighters who had won the Dutch Nationals in 2010. I had fought him a few times at the Rotterdam training camp over Christmas and he was very strong. After my win against Jorre I was fighting well and threw Rutger for a yuko then and Ippon to reach the semi-finals.

Abdullah Adashev (Belgium) Semi-Final

This was the first time I had fought Abdullah who is the current Belgium champion at -42. Abdullah and his brother Yusup are from Chechnia but now live in Belgium. They are both great fighters. This was going to be a really hard fight but I put in a really good display and the fight lasted the full four minutes and it was a good effort to only lose by a yuko. I was now in the Bronze medal fight.

Aymeric Conet (Belgium) Bronze Fight

I had lost to Aymeric at Harnes in December quite quickly and knew he was a strong fighter. It was a really tough battle with many close scores for us both. The fight went the full six minutes and thankfully the flags went 2-1 in my favour.

To get any medal in this event is really hard and more so this year as it seemed that all of the best fighters were here.

Link to results and Photos:

http://www.jbn-zuidnederland.nl/