Last few weeks

Over the last few weeks I have travelled over to the Americas to compete in a handful of judo competitions. The first stop was the Miami world cup in Florida. This was the first world cup I had competed in this year and I was a seeded player meaning I would get a good draw (hopefully). I beat a Swedish fighter in the first round, then u beat a fighter from the dominican republic before losing to a Mongolian and then losing to a Canadian in the repercharge. I finished up placing 7th

The US open was next- I did not fight very well and finished 7th with the Dominican fighter I beat in the worldc up placing first. It is frustrating knowing that the people I know I can beat win while I am way down in the 7ths or lower. But that is judo for you sometimes you can fight amazingly and lose and other times you can make a few mistakes and still come out on top. That is judo and that is the game we know and love. In judo you sometimes need luck and sometimes you need a ref that interperates something for you opposed to against you.

On the Sunday in between the world cup and us open I was lucky enough to get down to south beach and have a look around. The beach was nice but not as good as the ones back home. The shops sold similar things to those at home but it was good to get out of the competition hall and see a bit of Miami. We stopped passed Miami ink, now called love hate and got a photo. I also got a photo with a small guy that was ripped to shreds with muscles.

Next stop was Venezuela, which is not the nicest place in the world. Tgirl on the plane told us not to go to the beach, not to act or dress like tourists and not to talk to loudly and draw attention to ourselves. To make it more scary we had 3 armed police officers drive us from the airport to the hotel.
The hotel was nice and it had fantastic food (too bad i couldnt eat any of it.) While in Venezuela some Polish Judokas got held up at the beach by a group with guns, they were asked to go to the atm and give them 600 dollars. Thats some pretty scary stuff. It was for that reason that we didnt leave the hotel the entire time in Venezuela.

Rugged up to make sweat some weight

The weigh in in Venezuela was an absolute nighmare. They had 1 scales for both men and women and the morning of the weigh in they gave the men a pair of bathroom scales to weigh in on. These scales were 300 grams heavy and so nearly every judoka was running off the weight because we were all over-weight. Then the officals decided to change the scales and we would now be using the scales that the women weighed on. So we had to wait for the women to weigh in before we could weigh in. It was a shambles.

I fought a Tall brazilian and lost.

From Barcelona in Venezuela we left at 4am and flew to the captial called Caracus. we waited for 7 hours before flying to Costa Rica with one of the dodgiest place trips i have ever had. It was raining and lightening and just dark clouds for ages. We were coming in to land and with around 100 metres from the ground the pilot all of a sudden decided to bail on the landing and accelerated really hard and we were pretty much flying vertical for about 20 minutes before making turn after turn before finally landing. It was pretty scary thats for sure.

We waited in Costa rica before landing here in El Salvador. El salvaodor is 100 times better than Venezulea and it is so so cheap. A 600ml Powerade is 50 US cents. A Mars bar is 20 cents US. It is crazy cheap.

We went sight seeing a bit yesterday we went up into the misty mountains as well as the beach. Todaay is weight making day. I did some Judo this morning and then ill sit around with my team mate Ivo and watch some TV and chat before heading to the Sauna this afternoon. I will find out my draw tonight and fight my heart out tomorrow.
I am very keen to fight and so excited to give it y all and hopefully come away with a medal.

Thanks for all your support and help. You can see live results at ippon.org

God bless
Mattl