Judo Worlds: should we worry about the Blues two years from the Paris Olympics?

Gauthier Delomez 11:04 p.m., October 13, 2022

The French judo delegation looks gloomy at the end of the world championships, disputed this week in Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

With five medals (one in gold, one in silver and three in bronze), the French team is in 7th place in the standings and achieves its worst result since the Osaka Worlds in 2003. A worrying situation, at two years of the Paris Olympics and while judo is an important supplier of charms for France.

Guest of

on Thursday, Stéphane Nomis, the president of the French Judo Federation, shares his disappointment.

"Five medals is always taken, but it's far below what we expected. We expected at least seven, and more gold especially. That's where the real difference", he believes at the microphone of Europe 1.

"There, we reached the abyss"

This assessment is certainly disappointing, but also contrasting.

While the girls performed rather well, like Romane Dicko, crowned world champion in the +78 kg category, no boy managed to get on the podium except for the mixed team event which saw the Blues lose Thursday in the final against the Japanese.

"We can question ourselves in men, but in women, we get one out of two medals. Many sports would like to have 50% of medalists", tempers the president of the French federation.

The president of the French Judo Federation Stéphane Nomis calls for a change in training for French athletes.

"These are the settings that we will have to refine, we will have to resume training correctly", supports Stéphane Nomis, who notes a "catastrophic" balance sheet among the boys.

"We finished 24th nation (...). We had been going down for a long time, there we reached the abyss", he slices, adding that the goal is to "find solutions for the men's team because that's what will make the difference in Paris", at the 2024 Olympics.

A change in training method

Faced with this more than disappointing record, it should nevertheless be remembered that the two leaders of the tricolor delegation, Clarisse Agbegnenou and Teddy Riner, were missing from this edition of the world championships.

"What is certain is that we must change our male training system, and make people who win because it is on the mat that it does not win", insists Stéphane Nomis with Céline Géraud , former judo champion and now head of the Europe 1 company service.

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"Their technique is not impactful enough, they don't knock them down. At the tactical level, it's always us who take a third shido (yellow card), and on the ground, we sometimes lose dramatically. We have a a lot of work to do on the defense", advances the president of the French Judo Federation, comparing with the training model of the Japanese who have finished in first place in the ranking with 12 medals gleaned.

15 days to find solutions

The ex-judoka wants a radical change in the training method of the Blues.

“We will have to train them in startup mode, in restricted Olympic team mode tomorrow (Friday) or in 15 days, the time to put in place the new governance. We will do our best to move up in the rankings, at least in the first eight in the world", hopes Stéphane Nomis.

"You have to make a real metamorphosis, you have to renew yourself, offer something that breaks with what was done before."

The president gave a few days to the next governance to find solutions.

“Is Insep still the right model?” he then wonders.

"It's been 20 years since we changed this model, it no longer works. The ministries will have to follow us, like the National Sports Agency."

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Addressing the disappointing journey of some judokas in these last Worlds, Stéphane Nomis believes that the responsibilities are shared.

"It's the fault of the staff, the athletes. We are at their service, there are the financial means provided by the State, the members who pay the federation, we have the biggest budget of the countries to finish 24th in the world. It's a disaster for us", concludes the president of the federation.