Anna-Maria Wagner screamed because she had to forget her arm. The semifinals in the Olympic judo tournament in the class up to 78 kilos did not go according to plan. Wagner actually kept Shori Hamada in good shape, as planned. But then she was on the floor against the Japanese woman, and Hamada had pushed her left arm through without mercy. Wagner trudged off the mat with pain. The arm had to be tapped, and before her battle for bronze against the Cuban Kaliema Antomarchi she somehow had to hide the fact that she was battered.
So she yelled at herself especially loudly when she stood on the tatami at Nippon Budokan again. She returned to this tunnel where there is no pain and no difficulty, just the great goal one wants to achieve. Then she fought and won with a small score in regular fight time.
These are good days for the German Judo Association (DJB) at the Olympic Games in the judo capital Tokyo. After the medalless games in Rio in 2016, a different, more self-confident German team seems to be fighting under the rings this time. Not everything works in every weight class, but some things do. Two fifth places are already on the books: One by Dominic Ressel from Kiel (up to 81 kilos), who just lost in the semifinals. And one by Giovanna Scoccimarro from Vorsfelde (up to 70 kilos), who only missed the bronze after a great fight. On Wednesday, the Rüsselsheim 90-kilo fighter Eduard Trippel, 24, surprised with the silver win.
Wagner is not a person for soft confessions. She always wants to be better than others
And on Thursday it was Anna Maria Wagner Day, which the interested German sports press had specially noted. Because Wagner, 25, a sports soldier from Ravensburg, didn’t come to Tokyo as anyone. But as the current world champion and two-time Grand Slam winner this year. Wagner was the potential gold winner, that didn’t make her mission any easier. But she was not impressed. Her bronze win shows that she can be the longed-for ambassador of a new strength in the German judo team. Karl-Richard Frey, himself a good seventh in the class up to 100 kilos, said: “We have a lot of potential. That was simply shown more at these Olympic Games.”
It takes a lot of courage to expect the best from yourself. Restraint is easier because you don’t fall that deep when you lose. But Anna-Maria Wagner is simply not a person for soft creeds. She always wants to be better than others. She stands by it. She had also expressly not come to Tokyo just to be there somehow. “The conviction was super big,” she said when she had done it. Her World Cup success in June matched this claim, but actually she had already forgotten the victory in Budapest.
The World Cup as a preparatory tournament: On Saturday Anna-Maria Wagner can win another medal in the mixed team competition.
(Photo: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
“For me this World Cup was never a World Cup, in my head it was a little preparation tournament.” When she won there, she took a week off and a cut in her mind. She now had confirmation that she can beat everyone, but she wasn’t there yet. So keep working and take your chance at the Olympics. Everything started all over again in Tokyo: “A new tournament, new cards. I had no idea that I was world champion.”
You have to be able to deal with successes, especially in the global judo sport, in which you can never conclude from one success to the next. Frankfurt Alexander Wieczerzak, 2017 world champion in the class up to 81 kilos, this year the German number two behind Dominic Ressel, can tell about it. And Wagner also knows that her story can turn again. She’s one of those on the national team who has strong national rivals. Luise Malzahn from Halle did not make her Olympic qualification easy. Perhaps the drive from the strong rival is even one of the reasons for Wagner’s success.
Wagner doesn’t seem like a world champion who sees herself pushed into third place. He means a lot to her
After the tournament, Wagner stood in front of the reporters, deeply touched, and did not look like a world champion who saw herself pushed into third place. “This medal means so much,” she said, thinking of the tough Olympic qualification that ultimately dragged on for three years, the postponement of the games, the restrictions due to the coronavirus, which hit martial artists particularly hard.
Judo with distance rules is like cycling without a bike, that is actually not possible. You need a permanent sparring partner. Everyone in the national team had to find solutions for themselves. Karl-Richard Frey, for example, had his brother Johannes, who competed in the heavyweight tournament this Friday. And Wagner had her good friend Maike Ziech, a talented fighter whose career was slowed down by bad luck with injuries.
“We said we cut ourselves off from the rest of the people, but we stay together so we can train together,” says Wagner. Ziech became her stop and her test: “Everyone would lie if they said, this year was great, I trained all the time and was in a good mood. It was a roller coaster ride. If I wasn’t in a good mood, then she did dragged me along, when she wasn’t in a good mood, I dragged her along. ” Teamwork in individual sport: Without Ziech, Wagner would probably not be a world champion and Olympic bronze medalist.
The Olympic travelers of the DJB presented themselves as an intact team. They sat in the stands in the empty Nippon Budokan to cheer on those who did their job. They suffered and they cheered. When Wagner won her bronze fight, she disappeared into a cluster of enthusiastic colleagues. It was all the more important to Wagner to point out that there was still a chance to reward the collective. On Saturday is the mixed team competition in the Nippon Budokan. A medal is the goal, what else. Anna-Maria Wagner wants to do her part. And the arm? Will hold. The competition shouldn’t have any hope of that.