Christa Deguchi and Kyle Reyes – A Thin Red and White Line

08/01/2025

Born respectively on 29 October 1995 in Shihojiri (Japan) and 10 October 1993 in Brampton (Canada), Christa Deguchi and Kyle Roscoe Reyes have one thing in common: they live and train in Japan while defending the Canadian colours.

The first ever Maple Leaf-flag World champion (in 2019 in… Tokyo), the U57kg category athlete has had several lives. A double World junior medallist for Japan in 2013 and 2014, she took the bold step of opting for her father’s Canadian citizenship due to a fierce competition on her home soil. The decision earned her a three-year absence from the international tour, as allowed by regulations designed to protect training nations. When she returned, it turned out that her main rival in the world this time was… a Canadian, Jessica Klimkait, a year her junior. Their mano-a-mano was soon to become one of the instant classics of the ctour, especially after the double whammy of restrictions and the postponement of the Games from 2020 to 2021. The blonde Klimkait won the first round (World champion in 2021 and Olympic medallist in Tokyo two months later), while the brunette Deguchi won the second (World champion in 2023, runner-up in 2024 and Olympic champion in Paris). Waiting for the decider on the road to Los Angeles 2028?

Kyle Reyes had his first taste of the Games in Rio 2016 before being twice denied by another compatriot, the blazing Shady El Nahas, five years his junior. If the two men have in common that their best result to date is a World final – a controversial one in 2022 for Kyle, in 2024 for Shady – they are also one of those draws that no U100kg competitor likes to face.

When they meet in Italy at the end of December 2024 for the international training camp in Bardonecchia, the only world number one with more than 10,000 points in the IJF rankings and the English literature graduate – who, after all, rarely see each other on a day-to-day basis – agreed to take part in a cross-interview to talk about the converging trajectories that link them. – JudoAKD#030

A French version of this interview is available here.

World Championships Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), 23 May 2024. Kyle Reyes dominates Tajikistan’s Dzhakhongir Madzhidov with his fearsome left-handed uchi-mata ken ken in the quarter-finals. ©Paco Lozano/JudoAKD

How are you both feeling at the end of 2021, beginning of 2022, in other words at the start of the previous Olympiad?

Christa Deguchi – In terms of motivation, it’s average. The Tokyo Games were a too intense experience for me. I really wanted to go and in the end I didn’t because I put too much pressure on myself. For the Paris Olympics, I wanted to take things more slowly. I didn’t really speed up until the last year. As far as I remember, I cut everything after the Budapest World Championships in June 2021 and I had to start competing again in April 2022 at the Grand Slam in Antalya, where I finished fifth. At that point, I didn’t care about the result. I just wanted to get back into it gently.

And Kyle, what’s your state of mind at the end of 2021?

Kyle Reyes – I also returned to competition in April in Turkey, my first one since the World championships in June, where I also finished fifth. My state of mind at the time was a little different from Christa’s. I’d had so many injuries and it was difficult to get back into the swing of things. I’d had so many injuries and operations to deal with over the previous year and a half that I knew would not be able to recover on time, especially compared to Shady El Nahas, my direct rival in the national team, who’d just finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics.

So you weren’t looking ahead to this new Olympic cycle any more than that?

KR – At the time I am just looking to enjoy judo. To have a good time with my mates. I need to rediscover those simple sensations and joys. To be honest, I’m not even looking ahead to the Paris Olympics. And then in October 2022 I’ll come second at the World championships in Tashkent. It’s only from then on that I started thinking about the Games.

You exploded onto the tour in the 2013-2014 season: World junior champion in October, finalist in the Tokyo Grand Slam against Lukas Krpalek in December… And then there was the return to the warm-up mat of the same Krpalek, a few weeks later after your new fight in the second round of the Paris Grand Slam. I’d rarely seen him as drained as he was that day. Is that a sign of encouragement, when you’re twenty years old, to shake up a champion of this level to such an extent?

KR – Absolutely. Over that period he won the European title twice, as well as the World title. Pushing him to the limit is obviously a sign that you’re on the right path.

Christa, you did a very touching video interview on the IJF website, in which you put into words the extent of the malaise that gripped you at the time of your non-selection for the Tokyo Olympics…

CD – I think the time had come to talk about it. As I recall, this interview was conducted just after the World championships in Doha. If I hadn’t won those championships, I’m not sure I’d have managed to keep going until the Paris Olympics… I did manage to win them and that was a huge relief, and the signal I’d been waiting for to convince me that I could get back on the road to Paris.

Both of you fight for Canada, while living and training in Japan. But Antoine Valois-Fortier, who now coaches you in competition, isn’t on the mat with you every day. How do you organise your day-to-day routine, given the follow-up required for top-level practice?

KR – Antoine and I just text each other. He asks me how I’m doing and I reply.

And do you have a coach following you in Japan?

KR – No. In fact I alternate between Nichidai, which is more or less my base, the University of Tokyo Kokushikan and the Tokyo Police.

And it’s OK to change like that, from one dojo to another?

KR – Yes, it allows me to juggle when one place is closed, I can switch to the other and vice versa. When you’re at one university, it’s difficult to go and train at another. But now that I’ve graduated and I’m working for a company based in Tokyo, I’m free to come and go as I please. I just have to call them beforehand to let them know, just to be accurate.

How do you work, Christa?

CD – Quite the same, Antoine and I text each other, like I did with Sasha Mehmedovic before him. Otherwise, in my day-to-day life in Japan, I no longer have a coach at university. I used to have one but he retired.

Do the two of you ever bump into each other and talk about your shared singularity?

CD – No, for the simple reason that boys and girls don’t train together. I train outside Tokyo, at Yamanashi Gakuin University.

You’re both in your thirties – 29 for Christa, 31 for Kyle. Looking back, is this career straddling two countries a blessing or a curse?

CD – Above all, it’s a state of mind. If you see it as a curse, it will be a curse. If you see it as an opportunity, it is an opportunity.

KR – After that, I sometimes find it difficult to face European or Mongolian judokas because they are really very different from Japanese judo. When you train in Japan you get used to Japanese judo. I need time to get used to European judo, and that’s why I really enjoy the training camps abroad that we do with our Canadian team.

How often do you meet up with your team-mates from Team Canada?

CD – The two seasons leading up to the Paris Olympics were crazy. We were on deck all the time, either at competitions or at the international training camps that followed those competitions. In the six months leading up to Paris, I must have done something like six or seven competitions. That’s a lot. It may even be too much.

It’s something that Amandine Buchard describes very well, for example, when she recalls the sequence of five seasons leading up to the Tokyo Olympics and then the three seasons of the Paris Olympics. How do you feel, a few months after the end of this cycle and with the Los Angeles cycle already underway?

CD – I’m fine with judo. It’s just the competition that I haven’t recovered for yet. I like training, even though I haven’t had much time this autumn because of the many post-Olympic demands. I’m really hoping to get back into it at the start of the year.

What about you, Kyle?

KR – In fact, I took a total break of three or four months following the World championships in Abu Dhabi last May. The fact that I didn’t do anything for that long allowed me to regenerate. I resumed with a fine bronze medal at the Tokyo Grand Slam and I intend to continue to go out like that, not a lot but regularly.

Beaten at the end of a long semi-final at the 2024 World Championships in Abu Dhabi by fellow countryman Shady El Nahas, who finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics and is consoling him here, Kyle Reyes knows that he will not be competing in his second Olympics after Rio in Paris. ©Paco Lozano/JudoAKD

What’s the hardest for you in competition: facing a Japanese or a Canadian – or rather the Canadian in your category, since each of you has a clearly identified rival on the national team in the shape of Jessica Klimkait and Shady El Nahas?

CD – If I had to choose, I’d rather not take on Jessica.

KR – You’d rather take on a Japanese girl, would you?

CD – Yes, if I had to choose, I’d prefer it. It’s tough too, but as I don’t train in Tokyo, my rivals don’t usually have all the informations, which allows me to adjust.

What about you, Kyle?

CD – It all depends on you, doesn’t it?

KR – Shady’s a really great guy and my training partners in Japan know that I’m a pretty good guy too. In the end, it doesn’t matter: if I win it’s my victory, if they win it’s their victory. Whether it’s Shady or a Japanese guy, I don’t have any negative feelings about it.

CD – I wouldn’t go so far as to say negative, but as far as possible if I can avoid these confrontations it’s better [At the end of 2024, Kyle Reyes was 5-0 down in his head-to-heads with Shady El Nahas. For her part, Christa Deguchi is 7-2 in her head-to-heads with Jessica Klimkait, the last eight of which have been finals. She also beat Japan’s Tsukasa Yoshida in the final of the 2019 World Championships in Tokyo. A highly symbolic victory and venue, since the change of nationality that had kept her away from the international tour from October 2014 to October 2017 was partly due to her rivalry in the Japanese team with the same Yoshida. Finally, it was another Japanese of her generation, Momo Tamaoki, who precipitated her elimination from the race to qualify for the 2021 Olympics by dominating her in the semi-finals of the Budapest World Championships in June 2021. Ironically, three years later at the World championships in Abu Dhabi, it was by beating the same Tamaoki that Deguchi validated her ticket for the Paris Olympics, ed.].

Do you think you’ll be able to remain friends with your national rivals at the end of your career?

CD – Yes, with Jessica, that won’t be a problem for me.

KR – Same with Shady, there’s a lot of respect between us.

How did you manage these rivalries at the time of the lockdown, by the way? In October 2020 I interviewed Jessica in Budapest as part of the first post-lockdown Grand Slam (which she won). It was all very open and shut at the time as to who the Canadian -57 would be at the Tokyo Olympics, and she said that training under health restrictions made her constantly wonder if you were better off than she was in your preparation for Japan, Christa…

CD – I can’t remember how long the facilities were closed in Japan. Two months, perhaps? But I want to reassure you that I was under a lot of stress too. Especially when I realized that the rules of the game had changed along the way.

What do you mean by that?

CD – Originally we were going to have a single best-of-three-round fight, given that we were respectively number 1 and number 2 in the world. But the health conditions made it very unlikely that we’d be able to keep this date, so the solution we came up with was to take the one who would be best ranked at the World championships in June 2021. That day, she won her semi-final and I lost mine. That was the end of the Olympic race for me.

And for you, Kyle? That was the period when you were nursing your injuries, wasn’t it?

KR – Yes, I had an operation at the time of the lockdown because all the competitions were supposed to be on hold for a long time. And then there was talk of fighting within a month. I’d scheduled the operation because I thought I’d have the time, when in fact I didn’t have the time.

CD – Everything was like that at the time. In the autumn of 2020, there was talk of cancelling the Pan American Championships, before finally maintaining them, while cancelling all the other competitions to come. For the athletes, the training schedule was turned upside down.

KR – Yes, it was an unreal time, when I think back on it.

You have to remember that in those days you could do ten minutes of fight with long sequences on the ground, but at the moment of the final salute… you weren’t allowed to shake hands because of health regulations!

KR – No contact, no comment [Smile].

Are you already looking ahead to the Los Angeles Games in 2028?

CD – I don’t think about that yet. I take things one year at a time. At the moment I’m just trying to enjoy myself because the last year has been very intense. I was just training for the competition. Now I’m in a phase where I want to train to try out new techniques without any pressure. To try and do judo again, not just to win, but first of all to improve myself.

KR – It’s the same for me.

CD – I think it’s the same for everyone. (laughs)

KR – The World championship is still my main goal, season after season. I’ll see how things go over the years and if I’m in a good position for Los Angeles, then I’ll think about it when the time comes.

The podium in the -57 kg category at the Paris Olympics: gold for Christa Deguchi, silver for Korea’s Mimi Huh and bronze for Japan’s Haruka Funakubo and France’s Sarah-Léonie Cysique. ©Paco Lozano/JudoAKD

Christa, when you chose to change nationality, Kyle was already in the Canadian team, while also living and training in Japan. Was his story a source of inspiration for you?

CD – Not really. You know, in Japan, men’s and women’s judo are two very different worlds. And then I think that when I actually joined the Canadian team you were just coming out of surgery Kyle, weren’t you?

KR – Yes, I had quite a few surgeries at the time. Shoulder, knee, elbow… It cost me a good year and a half in all.

And were Christa’s good results a source of inspiration for you, Kyle?

KR – Of course, knowing that when she arrives I’m already just happy to have someone who speaks Japanese in the team. A lot of the team are from Quebec, so they often speak French. Christa and I speak either Japanese or English, but not French.

CD – As for Jessica, she speaks mostly English, and so does Shady…

KR – Yes, Shady speaks three languages, I think, as he grew up in Egypt and also speaks Arabic.

What would the Christa of today say to the Christa who tied her first white belt at the age of three (if I remember correctly what you told me during our first interview in 2018)? The same goes for you Kyle, what would you say to young Kyle who started judo when he was thirteen?

CD – You go first, Kyle. I want to take time to think.

KR – I’d tell him that he’s going to experience great friendships and a real community. That’s what I’ve discovered by training all over the place, both in Japan and abroad. The sincerity of your commitment means that you are respected.

CD – It’s much the same for the Christa I used to be. I’d tell her that she’s going to collect a lot of memories, some good and some not so good. Even if she doesn’t win, doing judo is already a good decision. There are painful moments, it’s true, but there’s a lot to learn every time.

Paris, 29 July 2024. Despite a forced three-year break at the start of her career due to her change of nationality, Christa Deguchi became the first Olympic champion in Canadian judo history at the age of 28. ©Paco Lozano/JudoAKD

In fact, Mimi Huh, the Korean you beat in the final of the Paris Olympics, had beaten you in the final of the Abu Dhabi World championships two months earlier. Do you think that your victory in July came from the memory of your defeat in May?

CD – Absolutely. When she beat me in Abu Dhabi, she also gave me the opportunity to understand her fighting style better, which will help me later on at the Olympics. But you have to realize that the final in Abu Dhabi was also a special moment for me. In the semi-final, the Korean knocked out Jessica, which meant that I was officially qualified for the Games, three years after the Budapest world championships, where the opposite scenario ruled me out. I felt a huge sense of relief, which perhaps robbed me of the extra determination it takes to win a World final… At the Olympics, for example, I wasn’t thinking in terms of wins or losses. I just thought about doing my best and that’s why, I think, it worked… So to answer your question, if I had one piece of advice to give myself when I was little, it would be just this: do your best.

Do you have any other examples of pivotal fights or competitions like that in your career?

CD – I’m thinking of my first Grand Slam in Paris, which I won in 2018. I had won a World Cup the week before in Portugal, but to establish myself at this level was an important step for me after three years away from the international tour due to my change of nationality.

And Kyle, do you remember a moment like that?

KR – I’d say in 2013, the year I won the World junior title and reached the final of the Tokyo Grand Slam. Just before that, in September, I won the Japanese University championships. I can’t say that I wasn’t convinced that I could beat the best, but it was a tough competition that proved to me that hard work pays off in the end. I wasn’t even twenty yet, and it gave me confidence in my abilities that has never wavered to this day. – Interview by Anthony Diao, winter 2024. Acknowledgements: Monica Barbieri, Pierangelo and Raffaele Toniolo. Opening picture: ©JudoAKD.

A French version of this interview is available here.

Bonus – 20 May 2024. By beating Momo Tamaoki of Japan in the semi-finals of the Abu Dhabi World championships (the same judoka she lost to in the semi-finals of the 2021 World championships, a defeat that ruled her out of the Tokyo Olympics), Christa Deguchi confirmed her ticket for the Paris Olympics. Beaten in the other semi-final by Korea’s Mimi Huh, her compatriot Jessica Klimkait, 2021 World champion and third at that summer’s Olympics, is this time the one left stranded: