From an Old Continent – Episode 2/13 – Autumn 2025

22/12/2025

« I learned hope from people who had every reason to despair, and didn’t. » Passing away on November 8, 2025 at eighty-one in a silence inversely proportional to the size of the imprint left by his writings and lectures over more than half a century devoted to dissecting and understanding what he called « contemporary disarray, » French journalist, publisher and essayist Jean-Claude Guillebaud leaves behind as he departs this kind of flash of lucidity, fruit of a lifetime of travels, encounters and questioning of his own assumptions. An obstinate smile, going against the dark omens of the moment, where the verb « to fight » seems to be conjugated in every tone and tense, but rarely in the present introspective.

The judo world, for its part, experienced an autumn in diesel mode. This was probably needed to recover from the 2016-2024 sequence, that non-stop megamix of training camps-selections-continental championships-physio-recovery-Grand Prix-Grand Slams-Masters-training camps-Olympics-individual and mixed team world championships-training camps and back at it again with a few lockdowns and quarantines in the middle, like a washing machine on spin cycle at fourteen hundred RPM. The great reset of summer 2025 allowed many to recover, catch their breath or even change weight categories. With, as a new parameter since November 27, the return to the circuit of the Russian flag and anthem, and the diplomatic tensions that all this generates. – JudoAKDRoadToLA2028#02.

A French version of this episode is available here.

To (re)read episode 1/13 (summer 2025), it’s over there.

*Paco Lozano (right) and Marcelo Rua, one November 2025 evening near Malaga. ©Anthony Diao/JudoAKD*

Paco Lozano – Spain – Photographer – During a chance visit to Malaga in mid-November, reunion in a Torremolinos restaurant with Paco and his faithful partner and former student Marcelo Rua – notably the author of that famous shot immortalizing at the 2011 team world championships that legendary sweep by Dimitri Dragin. A photographer’s eye, like a producer’s ear in hip-hop, has much to say about an era. You have to hear him talk about the Valencia international training camp in mid-August, where the season’s successes are forged. Those tatami-side discussions with club coaches as well as national team coaches, which remind us how much each dynamic of results is also explained by human factors: bereavements, births, misunderstandings, quarrels, reconciliations… A year later, he took the time to read the long interview that Benjamin Axus had granted us in the home stretch of the Paris Games that, despite his status as France’s number one in the ranking, he wouldn’t compete in – a life crossroads that would also mark the kickoff of the Gaba hype.

You also have to hear him talk about his pleasure in taking the time he needs to care for his photographs at the Malaga European Open and then at the training camp that follows. A week marked by the return to business of two of the three Russian world champions from June: the flexible reed Timur Arbuzov, imperial in his unprecedented U90kg category, and the Black Mirror creature Matvey Kanikovskiy, lethal as a drone in his U100kg category, about whom it’s whispered that even in the hammam no one has ever seen him sweat. Bothered by the three-month postponement of the Baku worlds which makes the event clash with the back-to-school imperatives that this invested patriarch is already anticipating in parallel, he’s nevertheless preparing with great appetite to answer the call for this 2026 year that’s already arriving.

*Qingdao (China), September 27, 2025. First competition as an U70kg and first medal for Melkia Auchecorne. ©Emanuele Di Feliciantonio-IJF/JudoAKD*

Melkia Auchecorne – France – #13 in the U63kg category ranking (-5); #93 in the U70kg (new category) – « I’d never cut off like that » says the Chelles judoka who, from Mykonos to Italy, took advantage of the summer slowdown to swap the soaked judogi for a sarong and coconut oil. A break that leads her to attempt a radical gamble: going to see if the grass is greener in the U70kg category. The first test is ideal: in the first round of the China Grand Prix, she finds herself facing Szofi Ozbas, reigning European champion and winner of two other Grand Slams along the way – the Hungarian will also win the Abu Dhabi one on November 29. An almost conclusive test: while she pulls off the feat of dominating the world #4, the French fighter slips in the next round against Malagasy Aina Laura Rasoanaivo Razafy, reigning African champion. Then makes up for it by going for bronze in this very first outing in her new category.

This is followed by ten days in Tokyo with the French team. Rumors are then rife: is she switching for good to -70 kg or will she agree to hurt herself again to stay U63kg, the category in which she was junior world champion in 2023 and 2024? The question is answered fairly quickly. On All Saints’ weekend, it’s again at U70kg that she lines up at the U23 Europeans in Chisinau, Moldova. And for once, she’s the only one of the French women’s group to come home empty-handed. Due to a fifteen-minute marathon including eleven minutes of golden score in the second round against Croatian Karla Kulic. « I’m not used to having a more imposing girl facing me » she additionally admits with that pensive pout well known to all those who have ever had to move up a weight category. The teams the next day give her back some comfort: three clear individual victories against U63kg fighters and a silver medal at the end behind Georgia.

Upon her return, her discourse has firmed up: « Although I’m at 67 kg, I decided to move up because I’m projecting myself onto 2028. » One less thorn in the side of Manon Deketer and Clarisse Agbegnenou who, busy with preparations for her second maternity, has enough experience to sense that her return to business will be simplified by this – unless she also moves up a category…

A quick trip to Belgrade on November 21 with the Chelles girls under the Auxerre Judo colors where she dominates Ukrainian Olga Tsimko and takes the time to feel the colorfulness of the Serbian atmosphere; another for nothing this time at the Judo Pro League since her opponent doesn’t show up; third place at the French championships on December 14, beaten « on the ability to remain patient » in the semi-final by Marie-Eve Gahié who wanted to remind, with increasingly close announced talents, the two Olympiads of experience that still separate them. Finally, a final individual victory to save honor in the Judo Pro League on December 19 against RSC Montreuil. The year-end holidays? An opportunity for family reunions in Cameroon, but also for revisions for her January exams, awaiting a return that she wanted to schedule at the Austrian training camp in Mittersill, with the Paris Grand Slam in her sights.

*With Mikita Sviryd in the heights of the Sierra Nevada. ©Martti Puumalainen Archives/JudoAKD*

Martti Puumalainen – Finland – #14 in the O100kg ranking (=) – After a short and active summer break (fishing, concerts, long bike rides in the footsteps of his coach, Slovenian Rok Draksic…), the 2023 European champion went back to work in Japan – where he caught a glimpse from afar of a certain Teddy R., visiting with the French Federation for a marketing operation – and in Italy.

Fifth on October 13 at the Lima Grand Prix, third the following week at the Guadalajara one where he only yields in the semi-finals to legend Lukas Krpalek, he’s pleased to no longer be content with shidos to win: « I’m managing to throw and set up combinations on the ground, it’s very encouraging. » Like all the players on the international circuit, the Finn already shows a rather substantial 2025 carbon footprint when he embarks in early November for Australia’s East Coast. With flights over Russia being prohibited for Finnish aircraft, it’s through an unlikely Helsinki-Hong Kong-Brisbane outbound and an equally copious Brisbane-Doha-Helsinki return that he’ll reach the Gold Coast World Cup – « Fortunately I easily sleep six or seven hours on the plane. » He wins his three matches there including a final against veteran Kayhan Ozcicek-Takagi, competing at U100kg for Japan at the 2010 worlds and returned under the colors of his native Australia since 2018. A victory that allows him to confirm his progress in standing-ground transitions and to see that his compatriots are slowly but surely rising in consistency since four make Top 5: Eetu Ihanamaki, first at -81 kg, Pihla Matikainen, second at -57 kg, Luukas Saha, second at -66 kg and Valtteri Olin, fifth at -73 kg.

In December, off to the Spanish Sierra Nevada for three weeks of high-altitude physical preparation with his sparring partner and friend, Belarusian Mikita Sviryd. It’s from there that he’ll watch with an expert eye the Tokyo Grand Slam and the evolution of power dynamics in his O100kg category where, barely installed on the world throne, Russian Inal Tasoev sees yet another compatriot, the statuesque Valeri Endovitskii, come steal his thunder of being the first heavyweight from the country to make resound again a national anthem so long awaited.

Morgane Sellès – France – Physiotherapist for the Azerbaijan team – If her summer 2025 were a poem, then it would have been a quatrain, with rhymes sometimes embraced, sometimes isometric. Baku as the central base of an expat life, the Netherlands as a fallback zone (and time to catch up with her daughter), and those weeks perfecting a care protocol, unprecedented in these latitudes, which she presents on September 12. A protocol made up of isokinetic tests, lactate measurements and screenings to best prevent injury risks for her athletes. Who, in anticipation of a 2026 year whose home worlds in October will constitute the pinnacle, are stringing together a big block of physical preparation and three weeks focused on ne-waza with that constant openness to visiting foreign partners, in a logic of mutual progression that a certain Jigoro K. would not have disowned.

Absent from the September tour in South and Central America, but also from the diplomatically important Islamic Games in Riyadh on November 8 and 9, 2025 for lack of having been authorized on site to book a single room (!), the French woman is on the other hand at work daily for the rehabilitation of athletes, as Richard Trautmann, the German head of the Azerbaijani national team, sends some to train in Japan and others to make red blood cells in the mountains. A welcome incentive to rigor and self-discipline, especially approaching the late November Abu Dhabi Grand Slam where, for the first time, Morgane officially tests her recovery protocol. « We went from the guy who lies down and gets his forearms massaged to guys doing active recovery for ten to fifteen minutes. The goal is really that all the little injuries are finished and that we start 2026 with a team that has no pain. Even for the Mittersill training camp, in early January, we decided to remove all those who had little injuries. The watchword is that everything be spotless. » An ethic of caution reinforced by a three-week training camp in the mountains to, on the athletes’ side, test themselves physically and, on the physio’s side, emphasize rehabilitation and prevention. Two of the silent pillars of performance, especially when it comes to sustaining it over time.

Toma Nikiforov – Belgium – The months following a sports retirement are rarely a formality. Game over for the vida loca between hotels, airports and reunions in the four corners of the world among athletes driven by the same quest for improvement. Sedentary life is a new reality, almost unprecedented for someone who was already cadet world vice-champion in 2009. On pause from judo particularly while following the IJF’s online training to get his coaching diploma, Toma works every other day with a Belgian Army officer. An obvious choice for anyone who remembers that at his beginnings in the institution that has accompanied him since the start of his career, in 2013, he had aced long-distance shooting. The rest of the time, the former double European champion releases his excess energy by lifting weights up to twice a day at the local gym and devotes himself to his family – he just left his Schaerbeek stronghold for the neighboring municipality of Sterrebeek, where he gains a few square meters of greenery and a garage. On November 21, he was looking forward to meeting up in the stands in Belgrade with the Auxerre Judo buddies for whom he sometimes filled in just a few months ago, during the Champions League. Unfortunately the death of a friend forces him at the last moment to attend the funeral in Bulgaria.

Ariane Toro Soler – Spain – World #4 at U52kg (+6) – The parallel is rare – and Spanish television doesn’t miss it by inviting the two women together for a quiz titled Objective Los Angeles 2028. Thirty years after the mother, Yolanda Soler, triple European champion at U48kg and third at the Atlanta Olympic Games, moved heaven and earth to taste the meager share of spotlight that the star Ryoko Tamura-Tani left for her generation, it’s the daughter’s turn, Ariane, to crash podiums almost always dominated for eight years by Uta Abe.

The infinite distress that the latter unwittingly showed to the world following her unexpected second-round defeat at the Paris Olympics now seems only a distant memory. World champion for the fifth time in as many participations in June in Budapest, the Tamura of the 2020s, therefore, is again on the highest step of a Tokyo Grand Slam nonetheless rich in pitfalls. Beside her on the third step, Ariane validates her autumn choices, namely taking the steepest path, racking up fights and information and only coming out when it’s a sure thing – and so it is. In detail, this gives three studious weeks in Japan marked by the return to business of her older brother Julen, long away from the mats due to injury. All accompanied by a short escapade to Paris then more classic training between Madrid, Galicia and Valencia. « It’s always a challenge to take on a Japanese fighter at home. Taking on several is even better and that’s why I was there » she says after a December 6 day with thirteen competitors and where she’s the only non-Japanese on the podium. Two weeks of training camp on site later, she’s loaded up on high-level randoris. Here she is armed for 2026.

*Leading by example. ©Ezio Gamba Archives/JudoAKD*

Giacomo Gamba – Italy – 116th in the U81kg ranking (-68) – Who said that dropping in the rankings equaled dropping mentally? Bothered by his shoulder since June, the Brescian comes out confident from his medical checkup on September 9: resumption of randoris planned for early November, with the Italian championships in his sights mid-December and a session in Japan to get back into the swing… Before that, Jack maintains himself with technical sessions, cycling and small soccer matches between friends. Goes to applaud his teammate Alice Bellandi, holder of the Olympic and world titles at -78 kg, honored in the experimental documentary Agon by Giulio Bertelli, presented at the Venice Mostra. And enjoys the privilege of having his father Ezio almost every evening on the tatami of their Forza e Costanza club. The convalescence proves longer than expected? Maybe it had to be that way. On December 17, the doctor finally gives him the green light to shift into second gear. « I’ll resume at Mittersill in January, » he rejoices.

*In coach mode at the French senior championships on December 14, 2025 at the Arena Saint-Etienne Métropole in Saint-Chamond. ©Anthony Diao/JudoAKD*

Daikii Bouba – France – Ranking #8 at U66kg (+1) – How do you move forward when, in the season of your twenty-ninth year, you’ve just strung together three Grand Slam finals, a European champion title and a wedding (on July 12)? First by indulging in the guilty pleasure of savoring a honeymoon trip to Albania while teammates are at a training camp in Japan. Then by quietly resuming in mid-August with a training camp in Valencia (Spain), « at Sugoi’s » as the expression has become consecrated in French judo since Amandine Buchard, in spring 2016, mourned a first life there and laid the groundwork for the next. Finally by joining at the end of August the internationals Martha Fawaz, Benjamin Axus, Maxime Merlin, Romaric Bouda and Nicolas Pavlovski, to lead the Judo Camp Excellence for minors-cadets in Châteauroux.

After a September between INSEP and this Judo Institute where a QR code is now required at the entrance, it’s in Mexico and as the #1 seed that Daikii finds his way back to competition, on October 17 at the Guadalajara Grand Prix. Third at the finish, he takes from this comeback the good (« I’ve never been so precise with my hands ») and the less good (« too many lapses in concentration »).

Exempted from the French championships due to his April European title, the AJA Paris XX fighter is in the front row on December 7 to witness Hifumi Abe’s Christ-like journey in his Tokyo garden. Five years almost to the day have passed since the latter’s 23’57 in apnea against his eternal best enemy Joshiro Maruyama sealing, coming out of lockdown, the ultimate ticket for Kosei Inoue‘s Dream Team before the home Games. Two Olympic titles later, Uta’s brother wanted to make up for his slide at the last worlds against Tajik Obid Dzhebov. This will be done, at the cost of an incredible expenditure of energy: a waza-ari deficit caught up almost at the bell in the quarters against Korean Chann-yeong Kim, an 8’37 golden score in the semis against the red bib of his compatriot, the reigning world champion Takeshi Takeoka, and a tight final once again against another compatriot, the fiery Kairi Kentoku.

For Daikii, placing seventh in a category where the four Japanese competitors accumulate the four semi-finalist spots and the four medals at the finish – and where even Ryoma Tanaka, the 2024 world champion, hadn’t managed to qualify – this remains a performance to be commended. And too bad if he himself considers « not having been very good… The only time I’d come to Japan was in 2023. I placed fifth and unfortunately I got injured at the competition. I couldn’t do the training camp. I was disgusted especially since it would have been the opportunity for me to finally invite Maruyama… who has since retired. »

Back the following Friday afternoon at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, he gives his wife a kiss and jumps on the first train to Saint-Etienne to encourage his buddies at the French championships in Saint-Chamond. On Sunday, he even warms up and coaches the U90kg Paul Livolsi competing against neo-Monegasque Aleksa Mitrovic, coached for his part by… Loïc Pietri. « I have my diploma and I’m preparing for it little by little » he says with a smile before going to get some air.

This autumn also rings in a time of renewal for his rival – and friend – Walide Khyar. At thirty, the 2016 European champion has swapped the topknot for a Questlove from The Roots-style afro, and seems rejuvenated by ten years. He moreover wins in Abu Dhabi the very first Grand Slam of his already long career. « Like Axel Clerget or Guillaume Chaîne before him, he became aware of the fact that the time he has left to fulfill his ambitions is now counted, » analyzes Baptiste Leroy, his coach at PSG Judo. « Having him work on physical preparation with Christophe Besnard has done him a lot of good. » From the same club as Kelvin Ray, the new French champion of the category, the 2023 world medalist and Paris Olympics fifth-place finisher will be one of the men to watch closely in the coming months. And one more challenge to take on for Daikii Bouba, who’s used to that by now.

*Belgrade, November 21, 2025. Second Champions League in a row with PSG Judo around Baptiste Leroy and co. ©Gabi Juan-EJU/JudoAKD*

Faïza Mokdar – France – World #9 at U57kg (=) – « The individual season begins » declared the same Baptiste Leroy on November 21 at the conclusion of a documentary telling from the inside the chronicle of a foretold victory for PSG Judo during the mixed team Champions League. Until then, autumn had seemed like a slow orbit placement for the winner of the 2024 Paris Grand Slam. Three weeks of vacation in Indonesia with two close friends – then a week tasting the silence of the southern Algerian desert in early November, awaiting Tanzania at Christmas (destination choices that say much about the open-mindedness of this young woman unanimously praised for the quality of her relationships with others) – the Parisian makes a promising comeback in Peru on October 11 where she wins the Lima Grand Prix by dominating in the final an Amandine Buchard wishing to spare herself yet another diet and test herself at U57. An interesting milestone coming out of a summer where she had to find her bearings again following the departure in early July of one of her main club coaches for two seasons, Belgian Damiano Martinuzzi.

Amazed by the cauldron atmosphere reigning in Belgrade when defending the mixed team European title acquired eleven months earlier in Montpellier, she silences a local crowd that was nevertheless on fire since Red Star was leading 2-1 at that moment in the final. Without hesitation, she ties up on the ground the world #3 Marica Perisic and clears the way for her teammates’ final gallop. It’s moreover to her that, on the podium, Laszlo Toth, the Hungarian president of the European Judo Union, hands the winner’s trophy on behalf of the entire Parisian team.

Again implacable through the rounds at the French championships in Saint-Chamond on December 13, she qualifies there for her fifth consecutive final but won’t win her fourth title in a row. She indeed makes a mistake in the final against her old rival Chloé Devictor, exposing herself to the uchi-mata sukashi of the one who was one of the French team’s sparring partners at the Paris Olympics. A silver medal that will have the merit of pricking her pride to no longer let this kind of lapse in concentration alter her forward march.

Two days later, the Council of State renders a landmark decision. The highest instance of the French administrative order grants the request made last spring by PSG Judo and ES Blanc Mesnil not to comply with federal injunctions concerning the Judo Pro League. The epilogue of one of those backstage tug-of-wars that often happen far from the athletes but concern them a little anyway.

Training in caviar mode alongside the cream of Japanese U60s. From left to right: Kenta Sekimoto, Hayato Kondo, Romain Valadier-Picard, Enzo Jean, Naohisa Nakato and Ryuju Nagayama. ©Romain Valadier-Picard Archives/JudoAKD

Romain Valadier-Picard – France – Ranking #6 at U60kg (=) – Through his stays in Japan, the 2025 world vice-champion raises his standards. The cathartic one in summer 2024 aimed to finally find the right posture against those Japanese profiles that until then constantly put him in difficulty. That of summer 2025 aims to find the best possible game plans to bring down those rivals more regularly. The rest is a matter of routine between Tokyo, Kokushikan, Park24 and Tenri: up early, metro to those dojos where everyone comes by bike but where no one locks it, straps, uchi-komis, randoris, ramen, nap, homework, then back at it again until bedtime.

This is followed by a late summer in active vacation mode between Piton des Neiges in La Réunion, then Seville, Madrid and Valencia. September is more focused on the French team and physical preparation. On October 9, here he is at the Judo Pro League with this ACBB team of which he’s already one of the driving forces, with double Olympic medalist Sarah-Léonie Cysique and Dutch world champion Joanne Van Lieshout. While his team wins 5-0 against US Orléans JJJ, his individual draw against Enzo Jean proves particularly rough especially during ground passages, to the point that the bout ends in tension and puffed chests. « But hey, I’m moving on. Anyway I’m not someone who feeds on conflict » concludes the one who, study-wise, is preparing to take on the challenge of a six-month internship working with INSEP and IRMES (Institute of Biomedical Research and Sports Epidemiology) on the fatigue index alongside former U100kg Clément Delvert, who has become a Sports Science PhD student.

The last two months of the year are the occasion for his first two tournaments since the Budapest worlds. And see him yield ground against his two main national rivals: second in Zagreb on November 14 (beaten by Enzo Jean) then fifth in Tokyo (beaten by Luka Mkheidze then by Korean Ha-rim Lee). He reviews his matches the following Wednesday and decides to see the glass half full: « I feel like I’m reaching the end of a big training cycle. Right now I’ve just strung together a week of training camp at the Kodokan then a week of training camp with the Japanese national team. All the best were there: the four U60s who did Tokyo but also Matsunaga, Fukuda and many others. It allowed me to implement everything I had planned to work on, on lefties as well as righties. It also allowed me quite a few realizations. I’m ending the year happy with this training phase and the new work directions I’m bringing back from it. » – Anthony Diao, autumn 2025. Opening photo montage: ©Peyo Diao-Thomé/JudoAKD.

A French version of this episode is available here.

To (re)read episode 1/13 (summer 2025), it’s still over there.

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