GB Judo

[Rafa Maciel 1,737]

Hadn't realised how bad the injury to Eric Ham actually was.

 

Eric Ham: How judo Olympic hopeful returned to action after breaking back in bridge fall - BBC Sport

[Rafa Maciel 1,737]

Tatum Keen on track for her biggest career result in Tbilisi. She's through to the gold medal match in the -52Kg weight division where she'll face  Blandine Pont. 

 

Irrespective of whether she wins or loses, it will be her best result ever and her first medal at Grand Slam level of competition. 

 

Staying in Tbilisi Acelya Toprak also has a chance to get her first Grand Slam medal. She'll fight  Martha Fawaz for bronze in the -57Kg weight class. 

 

Only a couple of months before the LA ranking window opens and the results are definitely looking better than we saw last year. 

[Rafa Maciel 1,737]

Team  for next month's European Championships has been announced - gotta admit, it is a little underwhelming given the decent start to the season, but it looks like a few of the athletes were ruled out due to injury. 

 

Men's -60Kg: Charlie Ayre - Took silver in the European Cup in Sofia in January but since then hasn't done huge amount on the tour, losing in his first round match in both Linz and Ljubljana.   

Men's -66Kg: Charlie Young - Got to the last 16 in Paris but then exited in first round in Linz. 

Men's -73Kg: Ben Levy - Started the year taking bronze in the Paris Grand Slam but lost in his first bout in Tbilisi earlier this month. 

Men's -73Kg: Ethan Nairne - Has had strong start to the season having taken silver in Sofia and taking his first Grand Prix title in Linz. He followed that up with a last 16 in Tbilisi earlier this month. 

Men's -100Kg: Oliver Barratt - Has reached the last 16 in both the Paris and Tbilisi Grand Slams and the last 32 in Linz.

 

Women's -52Kg: Tatum Keen - Took silver in Tbilisi last week and finished 5th in Linz.

Women's -57Kg: Acelya Toprak - With the exception of 5th place finish in Tbilisi, hasn't achieved huge amount this year.

Women's -70Kg: Kelly Petersen-Pollard - Finished 7th in Linz and reached last 16 in Paris but lost in the first round in Tbilisi last week.

Women's -78Kg: Emma Reid - Has had early exits in both Paris and Linz. Best result came last week in Tbilisi with 5th place. 

Women's -78 Kg: Shelley Ludford - Took gold in Ljubljana earlier in the year. 

  

[Rafa Maciel 1,737]

Some good news coming out of Tbilisi with Acelya Toprak winning her pool to progress to the -57Kg semi finals and Ethan Nairne will find in the repechage in the -73Kg class. 

[Rafa Maciel 1,737]

Silver for Emma Reid at the European Championship -78Kg class  First medal at Europeans for  since 2023. 

[mpjmcevoy 380]

On 4/19/2026 at 1:55 PM, Rafa Maciel said:

Silver for Emma Reid at the European Championship -78Kg class  First medal at Europeans for  since 2023. 

Between Toprak, Nairne Levy and obviously Reid, it seems that we've maybe overachieved given  what looked like a soft team on entry. Wasn't expecting much of anything, quietly pleased at this

[Rafa Maciel 1,737]

1 hour ago, mpjmcevoy said:

Between Toprak, Nairne Levy and obviously Reid, it seems that we've maybe overachieved given  what looked like a soft team on entry. Wasn't expecting much of anything, quietly pleased at this

I agree - it was a very positive set of results in what has been a pretty decent season for the  team so far.

 

I've actually got hopes that we could qualify a decent sized judo team for LA - and go to see that we've got a couple of weight classes where we're likely to have some decent domestic competition including W70Kg, W57Kg and M73Kg.

 

First key indicator of the team's ambitions will become evident at Ulaanbaatar Grand Slam in June. This is the first ranking event for LA and at the same event in 2022, we only sent 7 athletes (6 men and 1 women) but this tends to be one of the weaker Grand Slam events so is actually a great opportunity to pick up some big points early on in the process.