From Paris to Mongolia...

So from the 23-28 August, 2011 the World Championships were held in Paris. Although it was a World Championships, for me if felt more like a "test event". Competing 14 weeks after a knee reconstruction was always going to be touch and go. Even though the knee felt physically good, one of the hardest things coming back from this type of injury is dealing with your mind. The thought of re-injuring the knee is always there and it takes some time to get confidence back.

To help get around this thought process, I "stopped over" in Melbourne to give the knee a run in VIOC. Unfortunately I only had the one fight but it was still good to put myself under competition pressure. You cant ask your opponent to stop in the middle of a fight because you don't like the position your knee is on (unlike training !)

From there it was onto Paris and I drew Kazakhstan first. There is not a lot so say about this fight as I didn't get going and got thrown early..game over for me. Luckily there was the teams event on the Sunday and we drew Germany first up. This put me up against the no.5 in the World. The fight went full time but I was beaten on penalties. You are never happy to lose but I felt that after going a hard 5 minutes with such a top quality opponent, the knee should no longer be a problem both physically and mentally.

I returned home from Paris on the 30th August and was only there for a week before leaving for the World Cup in Mongolia.I travelled to Mongolia with my UNSW club mate Gemma Chadwick who competed in U/52 kg. I drew a Mongolian first up as did Gemma.

Our coach JB was not able to arrive until the morning of the competition. I was literally about to go through judogi control when JB came walking around the corner. The Mongolian officials were amazing. They picked him up at the airport, rushed him to the venue and took him straight to where I was. Five minutes later I was fighting with my coach in the chair and had a win!

The second fight was against the no. 1 Korean. I went full time but lost on penalties. Little disappointed in the refereeing which appeared to favour the Asian countries....but at the end of the day if you throw them for ippon, this wont be an issue!

In the bronze medal fight I was up against Puerto Rico. The girl was strong but I was feeling in control and confident. I managed to get her penalised for doing nothing and things were going to plan. I got a few good attacks in and some sharp ne waza. That's until I got caught with a left drop seoi... so no medal and had to be content with 5th place.

It's funny how in the past I would have felt content with this result. But not anymore. These are winnable fights and its about getting it right when it counts. We now have a 3 day training camp where I can continue to work on some strategies before heading off to the Uzbekistan World Cup next weekend.

I must say I had reservations about coming to Mongolia...I mean who goes to Mongolia??? But my opinion has definately changed. The people are amazing, the competition venue was awesome

and so well run....and despite being warned about the food, it's been pretty good.

The Mongolian Judo Federation hosted an after party function. they drove us 90 minutes into the middle of no where before we ended up at this mansion. We are told it belongs to the President of the Mongolian Judo Federation. Coming out of the roof of the house was a 54m statue of Chinggis Khan on a horse. From inside you were able to go inside the horse and look out over what was probably the Gobi dessert. It was an amazing experience!!!

I would definately recommend this competition to others who may be considering it. Particularly when you have the added benefit of the training camp.