Week end judo à Cork 15-17 Février (version inside!)

Ce n'est pas moi (ah bon?!) mais c'est pour vous donner une petite idée!

Ca y est c'est fait, j'ai replongé....Une rechute bien grave, car en plus de l'entrainement, j'ai repris la compet', et là, ça veut tout dire....que du bonheur :)
Alala, je me demande comment j'ai fait pour ne pas combattre pendant si longtemps...
Enfin je fais tomber le suspense insoutenable, avant de vous donner plus de détails.
So, résultats de la journée:

-Bronze en équipe,
-Or en individuel (52)
-Bronze en Open (toutes catégories)

Evidemment cela mérite quelques explications, surtout pour les non-judokas, mais aussi pour les initiés, parce que le judo en Irlande, c'est autre chose!
Et aussi tout ce qu'il y autour, j'entends par là un week-end à Cork, avec une vingtaine de judokas de Trinity déchainés, tant sur le tapis que sur le dancefloor, et que dire du bar! Vraiment un week en génial, qui laisse des souvenirs les jours suivant, courbatures et mal de cheveux de rigueur!
Je mettrai aussi les photos en mm temps que les détails; pour le moment mon appareil est entre les mains de Ronan qui centralise toutes les photos de la journée. Donc ca sera pour l'article suivant (version Aline!).
En attendant je vous livre le dernier mail de la capitaine du club qui raconte le week end, 'The true story' (l'histoire vraie). C'est en anglais désolé pour les non anglophones, mais je traduirai la phrase qui parle de moi (même si le reste est tout aussi passionant!) (quelques remarques en français à la fin!)

Here it is, the long expected slagging-everyone-off article about the Intervarsities, Judo and life. I won't even try this year to pretend to be anyone else, so its me, Ildico, writing this; all blame on me for everything, as usual. And I am also the only person who saw every single fight of the competition, because old age and ostheoporosis got the better of me after only one and a half fights.

First a word on training: After me and Joe spent the first term on the mat by ourselves, finally people reappeared after christmas when John took over training. Even John himself came back for that! We also got some surprise guests, as Jenny and Elizabeth wanted to experience student life again at least for a few weeks and the crucial weekend. Not mentioning free travel to Cork. As soon as we got back into the gruelling physical challenges of John's boot camp training, even more people trained – jeez do you guys like being punished??? Anyways, within about a week or two everyone was glowing with fitness and health, and everyone also got very enthusiastic about randori. Especially about beating the person with – so rumours have it - the biggest balls in the club, that being me. David finished this task in a way only a doctor could – brute force and 'are you ok?' afterwards, leaving me even angrier than usual. Actually, nobody else got injured despite the newest judo talents being on a rampage… And we were also fairly surprised how many people went to Cork (free travel and accommodation?!) after all especially the Dubliners really seem to hate that place for obvious reasons (too many hills)!

Surprisingly enough everyone arrived in Cork at some stage, even though it took some a bit longer and they had to keep celebrating instead of letting their team mates get their pre-competition beauty sleep. Most went down by bus, and even though especially the stars on the team did not consider this the right way to go to a competition, they were more than happy after 5 hours spent in lovely heartwarming company. First of all, the two ladies with their own minibar. They probably thought we were team anorexic – especially because Darren could not manage to stop talking about food at any time, and he had the perfect psychological explanation for it, too. The ladies left after he offered to search their handbags, which made things on the anorexic plane worse as another lady with a big bag of Cheeselets and Fanta took their seat and expressed her delight about this food loudly. But everyone somehow survived the weigh in, even the ones who had to lose 3kg in half an hour. Cork is probably still laughing about Ronan and Damien running in plastic bags outside a 5 star hotel! 'What the fuck? Exercising homeless people?'

Before I have to listen to anymore comments about the hostel, just some words on that. I REALLY don't know what your problems are. My room was nice, cosy and quiet, didn't smell like 14 boys, nobody snored, and had a whirlpool. Unfortunately nobody took pictures in underwear either, though. But let's talk about the competition.

First task of the day: defend the team titles. Let's make it short: mission failed. Cork pulled out some french aces and thought ahead to thwart John's massive plan. However, my tiny plan failed too, as the girls competition this year was rather heavily fought.
Being true to my raging feminism in training, I'll also mention the girls first here on the individual achievements. They were the best anyways. Jenny woke up after the team competition, winning the middle kyus; Aline being our french ace smashing everyone with throws bigger than herself in her weight and being the smallest person to ever win a medal in the open.[ donc ca veut dire: 'Aline étant notre 'as' français (carte magique en gros!) a balancé tout le monde avec des prises plus grosses qu'elle dans sa catégorie de pois, et a été la plus petite personne a avoir gagné une médaille en open, (depuis toujours)] Elizabeth stepped on the mat with a vengeance, fortunately not letting out her anger about not being on the team against the other Trinity girls but absolutely everyone else who stepped in her way. Unfortunately team Deenihan with their coach 'THE D' got more attention than team Trinity, which led to a shouting contest between me and John – needless to say my high pitched hysterical female screams won. More about team Deenihan to come later.

We should have probably told people in training what 'Ippon' means, that would have spared Damien the embarrassment of not knowing what was going on when he to his own surprise won a fight…but all the newbies did really well and fought extremely fair. Unless when fighting each other which brought Daniel a Bronze medal and Damien a dislocated shoulder – but revenge came later as Danny missed the meal when getting his bruised knee x-rayed…bet ya, Damien had the last laugh. George and Kevin almost raised suspicions again that Trinity stage fights, George just dropping on his back letting Kev get a hold down. Even his wife at her first judo competition was giving out to him for that, but he got revenge on Cork later, modifying a judo fight into a boxing match.
At the other end of the upper kyu's were Joe and Sebastien in the battle of the drop seoi nage's – it was a close one but Joe jumped clear at the last hurdle for a bronze. Then in the weights the frenchies were bouncing everyone around again, not our ones though, Dave valiantly limping onto the mat to apologise for doing such a bad breakfall when getting thrown for o-uchi in seconds. Sadly Darren's blistering open form took a tumble in his next few fights, maybe he had his eyes already on another prize.

Next up was the light-heavyweight hopeful Conor, winning easily in the first few rounds before coming to the third member of team Deenihan, that is JT. A great fight saw Conor coming close on the ground, JT just about evading Conor's reach, but then JT forgetting everthing John was screaming at him to go flying through the air, crashing into the mat for ippon. John got his revenge in the semis of the open though, summing up an unlucky day for Conor as he felt the wrath of charming Michael McKenna, who turned out to be the scourge of many Trinners.

Elsewhere on the mat Orkhan was punishing people (the excellent breakfall handed to him by McKenna's seoi nage must have warmed him up), reaching bronze in his weight. Suilhaiman also found form when fighting some of the few people on this planet that match him in skill, coming out of his shell to show some good attacking judo. Waid Taban!

The last of the day's judo brought more excitement – the final showdown 'JT Deenihan white belt, John Deenihan blue belt, now?!!?' going through the intercom more than a couple of times. The epic battle was to begin. An excellent fight saw much brotherly love, at times trying fiercely to get hugs, er, grips (apparently impossible according to John but that's what he says when I throw him too). In the last few seconds of the fight JT finally remembered what he forgot when fighting Conor, and threw John for a clean ippon with sasae tsuri komi ashi (beginners - eh? Don't worry we'll show you how to throw John later). We're just glad their Mammy didn't see it.

And then everyone tried to get drunk as usual, apart from Orkhan who stayed clean and interrogated Conor about the secrets of judo for the next 24 hours. (Don't try anything he told you, he was drunk after about 10 pm!!!) David was so pissed after one whiskey probably because he was so disappointed losing the limp-off competition to Paul, he even missed his medal ceremony, while others were trying to charm the ladies. Darren tried on the Trinity girls first, but when he discovered he had already dated women from their countries coupled with the surprised remark that we are actually women that didn't go down too well, he moved on to the next 'well' looking lady who entered the room, probably because he had just seen John run off with Joe (they got back late to the hostel; Bam-chicka wah-wah!) He already has the kids named, the church picked and the honeymoon booked – you're all cordially invited to the reception. The only problem not yet resolved is the language difference – is he learning Kerry or she learning Dubslang?

So what did we get out of the weekend? lots and lots of medals, lots and lots of injuries, the first Judo family of Ireland (with 2 new additions from Cavan and Ballyfermot!) French and Arabic fluency (Jacques Cousteau!!!!!) and knowledge about Azerbaijani eating habits you wouldn't even get from the Lonely Planet: one kg of Vienetta icecream that has to be shared, people not sharing are insulting the country! AND we now know who wears the trousers in the club - answers on a postcard please!

Voila, je suis très fière de ce qui a été dit, parce que malgré tout ce que je vous dirai sur le niveau du judo en Irlande, il y avait quand même des gens saprément fort, donc ca fait très plaisir!
Ah oui j'ai oublié de vous dire quelle compet' c'était! Les championnats d'Irlande universitaires , mais bon rien de comparable au FNSU, plutôt genre du niveau des Franche Comté :x