The young and tiny nation of Kosovo has emerged as a world judo power, its unexpected success spearheaded by diminutive Olympic champion Majlinda Kelmendi.
Eleven years after it gained independence from Serbia and in her first Summer Olympics, Kelmendi’s success in Rio in 2016 enabled Kosovo and its 2 million people to beat big brother Albania and gain their first-ever Olympic medal in any sport.
Kelmendi goes in search of more gold when she competes in the world championships in Tokyo this weekend.
Photo: AFP
Kosovo’s judo success story was created by coach Driton “Toni” Kuka in the small town of Pec where he founded a judo club with his brothers.
A training room with a leaky roof and worn carpets did not prevent the club from producing champions — the authorities decided only recently to finance its renovation.
“I’m sure that if there was no Toni, Kosovo would not have all these medals today, especially the Olympic gold,” Kelmendi, 28, said.
Kelmendi is the brightest star on Kuka’s team, but she now leads a group whose members aspire for their share of world titles.
Most come from the same neighborhood.
At the end of the 1998-1999 war, when NATO air strikes forced Belgrade to withdraw its troops from Kosovo, Kuka founded his club at Asllan Ceshme, a poor neighborhood in the foothills of the mountains.
Their children were his first trainees.
“Kosovo was in ruins and children traumatized,” he recalled.
Kelmendi, who lived “100m from the hall,” was among those who joined the club, the coach recalled.
“I didn’t know anything about this sport, but I was happy,” Kelmendi said. “We children had nothing else to do.”
Kelmendi’s exploits in winning world and Olympic titles brought her compatriots into the streets to celebrate.
“We have transformed children who have suffered from the war into world champions, measuring ourselves against countries like France, Japan or Brazil that have thousands of judokas available to build their teams,” Kuka said.
JUDO WORLDS
Taiwan’s Yung Wei-yang eased past his round 1 to round 4 opponents in the Judo World Championships — Britain’s Askley McKenzie, Russia’s Robert Mshvidobadze, France’s Luka Mkheidze and Uzbekistan’s Diyorbek Urozboev — only to be ousted yesterday by Lukhumi Chkhvimiani of Georgia in their men’s under-60kg quarter-final at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo.
The Nippon Budokan is to be the venue for judo events at next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games.
Yung clinched bronze at this month’s Asian Open in Taipei, bronze at July’s Grand Prix in Budapest, silver at May’s Grand Prix in Hohhot, China, and silver at April’s Asian Pacific Championships in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.
Last year, Yung won the Asian Open in Hong Kong and, in 2017, he was ranked the No. 1 under-60kg junior by the International Judo Federation.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier