A Fighting Chance: Oates Optimistic Over British Judo Hopes for London 2012

Sauntering back from the Beijing University Gymnasium, medal-free and drawing the curtain across an uninspiring decade of underachievement, British Judo had stepped into a fight at the Beijing 2008 Olympics and definitively lost. Team GB’s judo failures had discoloured an otherwise gold, silver and bronze display from British athletes at the 2008 Olympic games, with the discipline not contributing even a single trinket to Britain’s impressive collection of forty-seven medals in total.

British judo star Sarah Clark explained that the Brits were “getting hammered in the rankings”, and her words hadn’t fallen on deaf ears; radical alterations were to be made to the mechanics of domestic judo, beginning with a new head coach and climaxing with the development of a new performance centre in Dartford.

Centralising the discipline promised to “deliver medals at London 2012 and beyond”, bringing together “under one roof for the first time, Britain’s elite judoka under the direction of Britain’s head coach, the French-born Patrick Roux, the British Judo coaching team and performance directorate, as well as sport science and medical staff.”

Essential to the promise of deliverance was the continued determination of Britain’s “elite judoka”, as well as a co-operation with the new governing hierarchy and it’s strategic direction.

However, Roux has found himself the latest casualty of British Judo’s cull, with the Frenchman sacked alongside former performance director Margaret Hicks and senior women’s coach Jane Bridge. With Daniel Lascau implemented as the new performance director, the British Judo Association’s “difficult mid-cycle decision” is being hailed as the “right one for British Judo”.

Evidently one of the beneficiaries of the sport’s renewed vim and vigour is Norfolk’s judo star Colin Oates, who has enjoyed his most successful season to date with a bronze at the European Championships in April, followed by an encouraging fifth-place at the World Championships in August.

“The changes have been a real positive,” Oates explains enthusiastically. “It gave me a performance centre closer by than I had ever had access to in the past, it gave me good access to a physio, to strength and conditioning, to nutrition and in the long-term to good coaches. It benefitted me, and I think it has been good for British Judo.”

Oates’ resoundingly positive testament to the new formation of British judo, however, has not reflected by many others, with a number simply acquiescent to the modifications. The plan introduced by Roux is fairly simple; hold back British athletes from a number of tournaments in which they would have fought otherwise, in a bid to maximise training time and minimise the risk of burn-out or injury.

The dissenting few, however, argue that up-and-coming stars now have an increasingly difficult process of acquiring ranking points, and consequently a more difficult time against top seeds when they do compete.

“The situation is new and fresh to us. We’re not too sure how it is going to go from here, but I think there is a lot more to come from us [Team GB]. We were progressing well, but because of 2012 there is a little bit more urgency to get results.

“We’ve actually got some good players who have made some great progress; from watching them fight when I started the whole cycle, to what I see from the tournaments I now go to, I can see that everyone is definitely improving.

“Competing against France, Russia and Japan is difficult because they have real strength in depth. If you look at France, they have almost twenty-times the membership that we do. It makes it a little tougher for us, but we definitely have a good chance at the London 2012 games.”

Dating back to the likes of Neil Adams and Kate Howey, British judo has a tradition of delivering on the greatest stage of all, and central to Team GB’s medal hopes in London is Oates’ fortunes. The British number one believes that with some minor adaptations to his technique and focus, he can make the transition to making finals and eventually to Olympic glory.

“If you look at where I was maybe two or three years ago, back when I was losing first or second contests at some of the events I was in, the step up from that probably is the hardest step. I had to get my mental game right, I had to be prepared, get my focus right for every competition.

“Once you can make finals, it comes down to a little bit more skill and determination at the final point, because it will be your fourth or fifth fight of the day. Your fitness and strength will come into it, so it is a different challenge, but is probably easier than where I have come from initially, so by 2012 hopefully I can make the changes.

“I’ve been to a few tournaments now where I have been in and around a bronze medal, and one of the things I want to look at before 2012 is to maybe make a final and be on the main stage at a major event.

“Fighting for a bronze is obviously really good experience, and is at the end of a competition so it means you are in there, but to make a final is something I want to target. I’m definitely in a position now where if I can produce something like I have already been producing, then I can accomplish that. I’m in a good position to provide a result at the 2012 Olympics.”