A little over six months before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, three judokas from the French men’s selection met for a preparation course in Reunion. The opportunity to enrich their practice against judokas from the Indian Ocean.
JCTS / Nina Santi • Published January 6, 2024 at 6:45 p.m., updated January 6, 2024 at 6:47 p.m.
Final straight for the French, under a heat which will perhaps accustom them to that of July 2024, during the Paris Olympic Games. The French men’s judo team was on the tatamis at the Saint-Denis dojo for a preparation course, a few months before the competition.
Three high-level athletes selected for the Paris Olympics are present for ten days in Reunion: Walide Khyar, (-66kg), bronze medalist at the last world and European championship, Alpha Oumar Djalo (-81kg), medalist European and 3rd at the Antalya Grand Slam in Turkey, and finally Luka Mkheidze (-60kg), originally from Georgia, bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics and gold medal at the European Championship in Montpellier.
Since the middle of the week, they have been facing “sparring partners“(training partners) from delegations of Mauritian and Malagasy judokas, but also from Reunion Island.”We have the impression that they are a bit like Uzbek judokas! They are very very good, manage to turn in all directions, which we French cannot do. I think the training methodology is a little different“, notes Walide Khyar of the France team.
The French are training in Reunion before the Olympics. • ©Nina Santi
On the program for their course, two 1h45 training sessions per day, consisting of “randori”, free, open fights without stakes.
“We’re not used to training in the heat like this, it’s a bit of a new thing for us. We come to look for good weather, and to recharge our batteries before starting the season which will be very, very long.“, breathes Luka Mkheidze.
Alpha Oumar Djalo is preparing but is not yet 100% in the Olympic Games. And for good reason, he has other deadlines before next July: “I know that the games are present but there are several stages that must not be missed: I fight in a month, there is still a European championship, a world championship…“.
The choice of Reunion Island for this internship was not made at random, far from it. Baptiste Leroy, the coach of the French judo team, knows the area well, having been national technical director of Mauritius a few years ago. “I had prepared for the 2019 Island Games against Reunion and the Malagasy, and I know that in the Indian Ocean there are very good judokas who practice a different type of judo than in Europe, a little more spontaneous, with attacks on the right, on the left… It’s less formatted“, observe Baptiste Leroy.
The French are training in Reunion before the Olympics. • ©Nina Santi
However, one of the objectives a few months before the Olympics is to know how to mix the types of confrontation, to prepare for all eventualities, for the first fights on July 27 at the Paris Arena.
The Reunion judokas who were able to fight and closely observe the method of these big names, learned a lot from it, like Salim Abdouroihamane, from the Porto dojo. “It shows that they are prepared athletes, they are very precise and they know what they are doing, they do not reproduce mistakes and analyze a lot“, he concludes not without admiration.
2024-01-06 14:47:35
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