Thank you to Simon Ward who sent in the following report from the Western Area after they sent a squad to compete in the 10th Flanders International Judo Cup in Belgium earlier this month.

The Western Area Team has been developing constantly in recent years, so it was decided by the Coaching team to combine a top European Tournament alongside a challenging Training camp. This would allow the Area Team to could gain valuable experience and help in their preparation ahead of this years British Championships in December.

The Flanders Tournament is one of the biggest events on the Flemish Judo Federation’s calendar. The event this year attracted 800 judoka, and with another 320 entries declined, proves just how popular these championships are. This year’s event involved 15 nations including Israel and Azerbaijan, as the championships’ slogan proudly states, “The place to be for Champions”. It certainly lived up to this quote with many top world ranked cadets and juniors all fighting for medals during the weekend.

A team of 25 judoka left Bristol, on Friday 30th October at 6am to travel over to Belgium. Our journey was very relaxed and despite a little confusion from our sat nav system, which took the team coach just slightly the wrong direction towards a low bridge, which we clearly couldn’t cross or drive under, we did eventually arrive at our Sun Parks resort in Mol just before 8pm.

The first day’s competition saw our under 18 boys and girls as well as the under 21 females compete. We had some great performances from our judoka, as some were making their debuts in European competition. After a hard days competition the team successfully came away with a bronze medal from Chandler Hill in the -81kg category when he held-down Guillian Paes from Belgium, with a strong Kesa-gatame to score ippon. We also secured two 5th place finishes from Scarlet Hodge -48kg, who had fought really well to reach the semi-finals before, losing out to fellow England judoka Molly Harvey, and then disappointingly also losing her bronze bout to Laura Hewitt. While in the under 21 group, Chloe Robyns Landricombe in the -57kg category lost to Alica Verhaegen from Belgium in her bronze bout.

The team did equally well on day two, with the under 15 and under 21 men’s groups competing. We won a second bronze medal from Kern Foot in the under 21 -90kg category, he defeated Rowan De Winter from Netherlands to win bronze. Tom Smith produced the team performance of the trip by taking 5th place in the u15 -46kg category by winning his pool with two ippons against Swiss and Belgian athletes.

Tom then fought through 3 more rounds before losing in the semi-final to Glan Kraus from Switzerland. It was then very disappointing for Tom to also then lose to his fellow England team-mate, Tero Oliver in the Bronze contest. But Tom had won 5 intense bouts on route to his 5th place and should be very proud of his performance.

Renz Vallejera produced a string of ippon wins as he went from strength to strength on the u21 -66kg category. Renz was knocked out of the competition in the quarter final by the eventual gold medallist. He fought back to reach the bronze medal final, only to narrowly lose to Simon Scohier from Belgium in a contest that was extremely well balanced. But this contest was unfortunately decided on a debatable referee decision which went against Renz, who finished the day with his five wins and 5th place.

The team then stayed in Belgium to join another 300 judoka taking part in the training camp for two days. This provided the best opportunity for our team to challenge themselves even further, as many of the National Federations along with Belgium and Dutch clubs also attended each session. In total the group completed well over 30 randori bouts each during our 3 two hour sessions at the camp. The sessions started with a mix of agility and strength exercises for 15 minutes, followed by a variety of Uchi Komi drills for a further 15 minutes before the Randori. Many of our Judoka where able to match themselves against judoka from their weight groups again, and over the period of the camp really made some amazing improvements in their judo and psychological attitude.

The whole experience was amazing and we feel the teams characters and friendships within the group develop as equally as well as their Judo did during the trip.