Imperial Judo at the Warwick Invitational

Last Saturday (29th January) the Imperial Judo Club took part in a large student competition hosted by the Warwick University. With more than 230 participants, it was the first large-scale competition the club was able to attend since the start of Covid-19 two years ago. The competition was divided into two main parts: an individual competition to which our club sent Ismail Hussain (blue belt), Jedidiah Cheung (green belt) and María Carretero Soria (2nd Dan black belt), and a team competition for brown and black belts to which our club sent Michael Tanzer, Edward Fry, and Levin Meinke (all brown belts).

Ismail showed the results of his hard training bringing home a gold medal by defeating very seasoned opponents. His performance also impressed some other universities that wanted him to join them in the team competition later in the day. Jedidiah also performed splendidly, scoring a Bronze medal and winning very challenging matches. The team competition proved to be more challenging for us. Due to incomplete numbers, some teams had to be combined from different universities. Michael Tanzer and Edward Fry joined the Keele University team who had some amazing members and won two of the four matches they took part in, both scoring points towards their black belt gradings; and Levin Meinke fought well with the Southampton team.

All in all it was a fantastic experience where we went up against opponents on our own skill-level, which is always useful to improve and to find where to focus our training next, and against some much stronger opponents, showing us where we can get if we keep at it. It was also amazing to be part of a team competition where we could exchange views with members of other clubs from across the country. If you’re interested in learning the kinds of throws shown in this article’s photos, you should drop by for a session at the club. Email us at judo@imperial.ac.uk, and see training details at @icjudo on instagram.