Judo Grand Slam

Yeah.

What's it like now from on a club level having the Olympic Games in your country in LA 28 coming up? How has that effect? Has that trickled down in any way and affects the mentality of the people you're training with that you've got an Olympic Games in the USA coming up? Athletes like Jack Ionesca who are coming through and you know, I'm sure you saw the other day he took the first Grand Slam medal since you actually.

Yeah.

I think you were the last male USA Grand Slam medal.

And that was what, 2012, 2013? I think.

I think it was in the leader.

Rio, I think it was.

Showing the age there.

Yeah.

But, you know, for two years the, um, the federation didn't, uh, put me on Grand Prix in Casba- Grand Slam because they say that I was too young for do it, you know? My, my opponent was Helio Verde, amazing champion, and I always, uh, uh, look him when I was young.

He was one of my idols.

But in the last year, last two years, I was in very good shape.

Mm.

Now you must think only to grow up, to become stronger, to train a lot, and to have the test match.

For me, the Grand Prix and Grand Slam are only the test match.

Mm.

It's, it's accessible to everybody online around the world, but a majority of their events, almost all of their events, are held in Europe or Asia.

So when you look at countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, um, Georgia, Tokyo, J- you know, Japan, um, and all throughout Europe, all of the Grand Slam events, all of the World Masters, and all of the World Championship level events are held in those countries.

And normally those tournaments also have some training camps where people stay and train afterwards, so the community gets together.

But unfortunately for people that are in North and South America, there are no Grand Slam events.

There's no World Championship level events.

We have to always travel for competition, which makes it very expensive for those countries to do so, and also it doesn't expose anybody in these, the lower level, like the juniors, the cadets.

I, I'm trying to have a lot more influence, um, because I do, I do think that right now our team is a little bit overexposed, meaning they're competing in too many high-level events, you know, particularly Jack Jeschke and, um, Maria Laborde.

It's great to be ranked in the top five or top eight in the world, but at the end of the day, what matters is that you're fully ready for the LA Olympics.