The Europeans were in Chelyabinks and Great Britain Sent 21 athletes, only one medalled – Karina Bryant. Sarah Clark and Sally Conway came 5th and 7th respectively.

It should be noted UK sport base their funding on Olympic, World and European medals. The funding is based upon potential to deliver at an OLympic games and this is derived from the World and European medals (of course there are other criteria). Funding for an Olympic cycle is therefore based upon performance in the previous cycle i.e. 2008-2012 funding was based upon our 2004-2008 performance in OG, worlds and Europeans. We should look at these and the ones through this present Olympic cycle.

2005 Euro – GBR won, 1G, 2S and 1B

2005 Worlds – GBR won 1G & 2S.

Of these 2005 medal Karina won gold at the Europeans and 2 of the silvers at the worlds

2006 Euro – GBR 2G and 2B (Karina came 7th)

2007 Euro - GBR 2B

2007 Worlds –  1S & 1B

2008 Euro - No medal

2008 Olympic Games - No medal

2009 Euro - 1S

2009 Worlds – 1S

Both of these silvers were Karina and the woman she lost to in the final of the worlds was later found to test positive for drugs.

2010 Euro - GBR 2B

2010 worlds – 1B

One of the Bronze at the Europeans was Karina

2011 Euro - 2B

2011 Worlds - No medals (Karina came 7th)

2012 Euro -  1B (Karina)

Therefore we can say that over the last two Olympic cycles GBR has won 21 medals and 7 of these were Karina Bryant. I think the only other players in the last ten years to consistently win medals at world and European level are Euan Burton and Craig Fallon.

Surely then we can argue that much of the high performance funding GBR has seen for this Olympic cycle (£7.9m) and probably the next is due to Karina Bryant despite being  injured for much of the 10 years.

The reason I wanted to write this post is twofold. Firstly I think British judo owes a great debt to Karina and she should be given huge respect for this. Secondly, in my opinion, Karina’s bronze medal fight in Chelyabinks is the best I have ever seen her, she is strong, has great judo and hopefully ready for London!

Here is Karina’s bronze medal fight

On Monday we had the current performance director of British judo and Former world champion Daniel Lascau (7th Dan). He took the students through nage no kata explaining how coaches need to understand the underlying principles of judo in order to improve performance.

Wednesday we were joined by world and Olympic champion Maki Tsukada, she presented in the classroom on the talent development system at Tokai university before taking a mat session at Comberton judo club open to all players in the area, including juniors. There were around 70 people on the mat!

On Thursday we had double european and world champion Loretta Cusack (7th Dan). In her first session she explained how coaches can use drills to move their students from technique to skill; in her second session she presented on some of the difference between male and female judoka, she highlighted things coaches should be aware of when coaching females.

Throughout the week we Hatsuyuki Hamada (8th Dan) with us, he took many many sessions for us. Many people reading this would not have heard of Hatsuyuki Hamada, he was  the Japanese national coach for the Atlanta Olympic games and the personal coach of Ryoko Tani (7 x world champion and 2 x Olympic champion). Hamada sensei took too many sessions to discuss in one blog, his sessions were amazing and very good fun. On Wednesday he travelled to Dartford to see the England training camp as some of the players had previously met Hamada sensei not heir trip to Japan.

An absolutely fantastic two weeks that had a good balance of academic study and mat based sessions. I will try to post some more photos later. There is more information on this world leading coaching program run by Anglia Ruskin University for the European Judo Union at www.anglia.ac.uk/judo.

Craig’s first session was in the classroom to our year 2 students who are learning about talent development models. According to Bruner et al (2009) there are two clear talent development models outlined in research, one of these is a transitional model and we had asked Craig to teach about his transitions in his career. This is particularly pertinent for him now as he is in possibly the biggest transition of all – retirement. This is a hard time for any athlete but for a world and European champion it is even harder. The aim is to teach our students, who will be (or already are in some cases) decision makers for national federations how to manage these transitional phases.

Craig’s second session was on yoko tomoe nage, I had asked Craig to teach this and to discuss how he had developed this technique over time. This is so that students can see how techniques for talented players have to be developed over a number of years. Hatsuyuki Hamada (coach of Ryoko Tani) will be showing the same technique next week so that students can compare methods and see there is no right or wrong way.

His final session was in ne waza, and he showed how he developed his famous turn over. It really is amazing to see how he understand every detail and how he has a solution to almost every problem.

When I speak to people in the UK and say Craig is coming for a session, they always say “that’s good” or “it’s great” etc but the reaction I get from foreign judoka is completely different, I told a French guy a couple of years ago Craig was coming over to coach and I thought he was going to fall over! When I told one of our German students Craig was coming on this block he just stood still and said “this is fantastic, he is an absolute genius!” My point is that Craig is one of only three male world champions this country has ever had, he is also the most recent, add to this a European gold, world silver and the fact he has never lost in a world cup at u60kg and he really is something special.

As a judo coach I have been to many workshops, coaching courses and seminars with world and Olympic medallists and for me Craig really stands out, I have been fortunate enough to see quite a few of his sessions, they are always different, he has an amazing attention to detail, he understands how to adapt techniques for heavy weight and females and he emphasises with players. For me he is one of the UKs most under used resources.

Below are some pictures of the session he did on the EJU coaching award and also some pictures from the dojo opening at Comberton Judo Club where Karina Bryant and Craig led the opening session.

I would strongly urge any coaches reading this who are looking for someone to run a session to contact Craig, regardless of what country you’re in. If you need to you can contact him through me.

Over these two weeks our two year groups will take three module. Year 1 students are doing a 30 credit module called “Applied pedagogy in Judo” and the year two students are doing two 15 credit modules – Sports Development and Talent Development Pathways in Judo. After th block each group will also have an online module each.

Lecturers this week have included….

Bob Challis (Pathway Leader & EJU level 5 high performance coach)

Dr Mike Callan (Director of judospace and President of IAJR)

Nuno Delgado (Olympic Bronze Medallist & EJU level 4 performance coach)

Dr Lisa Allen (Judo event manager London Olympics 2012)

Kat McDonald (Presented on Athletes in Education and works at TeamBath)

Matt Divall (England Excell coordinator and EJU level 5 high performance coach)

Craig Fallon (World and Olympic champion)

Our mat based sessions have been at Comberton Village College who Anglia Ruskin already work closely with for their judo program. These sessions have been world class! I will post more information on some of them in others posts.

It was also god to see some of our judo players from our full-time program making the most of this special environment and coming along to the sessions.

Mike Stewart Gold U66kg

Adrian Markov Gold U81kg

Andre Cojuhari Gold O100kg

Johnny Morris Bronze U81kg

Janaina Magalhaes Bronze U63kg

There’s more to come, we have lots of video too.

We had a strong squad of player this year with 13 players fighting. We also had a mix of kyu grades (coloured belts) and dan grades (black belts). For the first time this year we also had female fighters. We had a very successful day with three golds, and two bronze in the dan grades and two 5ths in the kyu grades. In total we had 58 fights in the individual competition with 40 wins, 37 of which were ippon! The medallists were -

Mike Stewart u66 dan grade GOLD

Adrian Markov u81 dan grade GOLD

Andre Cojuhari +100 dan grade GOLD

Johnathon Morris u81 dan grade BRONZE (only lost to Adrian)

Janaina Magalhaes u63 dan grade BRONZE

Brian Koehn u73 kyu grade 5th

Ishmael Tappaev u73 kyu grade 5th

I think in someways we were unlucky to have all three of our u81 dan grade men to end up on the same side of the draw, if not we could have maybe got gold, silver and bronze in that weight group. This is also our first female medal ever.

The team event on the Sunday say 16 universities in the mens section. The Anglia Ruskin team was aching from having so many fights on day one (25 fights between the 5 of them) and we lost our heavy weight forcing us to put in a reserve. We also withdrew our women’s team. The team was still strong:

u66 Mike Stewart

u73-90 Glenn MIller

u73-90 Adrian Markov

u73-90 Johhny Morris

+90 Josh Plant

We fought Aberdeen, Nottingham, Birmingham, Imperial, and Herriot Watt on our way to face Oxford in the final. The scores were:

Anglia Ruskin 5 Aberdeen 0

Anglia Ruskin 4 Nottingham 1

Anglia Ruskin 5 Birmingham 0

Anglia Ruskin 5 Imperial 0

Anglia Ruskin 4 Herriot Watt 1

Anglia Ruskin 3 Oxford 1 (there was one draw)

Overall on day two the team had 29 fights and 26 wins, 21 of these were ippon.

In total over the weekend Anglia Ruskin’s 13 players had 87 fights with 66 wins. Of these 66 wins 58 were ippon. For the second year running we have run the mens team championships, this year we also topped the medal table for the individual event and we won our first women’s medal.

Our university team can only win because of the great support we have had, in particular we would like to thank the following:

Fighting Films for providing the judo kits

Unisport UK for providing the stash

Susie Chesher for booking the accommodation

The students union who provided transport and entry

Most of all we would like to thank Dr Sheila Pankhurst – Head of Department of Life Sciences for support and funding of the entire judo project.

Some photos and videos will follow soon