Three Olympic medalists and three world champions celebrate their birthdays on August 27th. Ole Bischof was Olympic champion in the U81kg in 2008 and runner-up in 2012, both times against Kim Jae-Bum. He won bronze at the World Championships in 2009 and the European Championship title in 2005. Very successful with TSV Abensberg. Very popular and promoter of judo at Eurosport as a TV commentator and analyst for EJU/Judo TV. Today he turned 45. He is also a member of the German national team.
Portuguese Nuno Delgado was 48 years old. Delgado won the bronze medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was the best male athlete Portugal has ever seen. President of the Escola de Judo Nuno Delgado and its Achieve, Collect and Give Back project. He won the European title in 1999 and silver in 2003. Nuno won world championships and national titles. Delgado never actually fought against Bischof.
Japanese heavyweight Mika Sugimoto was a finalist at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Sugimoto became world champion in Tokyo in 2010. She won a bronze medal at the 2011 World Championships in Paris. She was a bronze medalist at the 2008 World Open. She won the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou.
Loic Pietri is 34. Pietri is the 2013 World Champion, the 2014 Bronze Medalist and took the Silver Medal at the 2015 World Championships in Astana. He won three consecutive European and World Championship medals. He always competed with Avtandili Tchrikishvili, but won the European team gold medal with France in Baku in 2015. He almost always wins medals wherever he competes, but has not been successful so far this year. Pietri fought Bischof twice, but the German won both times. We suspect it’s a matter of experience.
The 44-year-old Italian head coach Francesco Bruyere was a finalist at the 2005 World Championships in Cairo in the U73kg category. In 1999 he won the bronze medal at the Junior European Championships. He won three World Cups in Rome, Tallinn and Miami. He won 8 World Cup medals and became a coach after his retirement. This month he won the Olympic title with Alice Bellandi.
42-year-old Yohei Takai from Japan won the bronze medal at the 2005 World Championship. He won the 2006 Super World Cup Tournoi de Paris in the heavyweight division. He won the 2008 Tokyo Grand Slam.
Also worth mentioning is the birthday of Olympian Iurii Krakovetskii from Kyrgyzstan. The heavyweight won Grand Prix medals in Astana 2014 and Samsun 2015. He won silver at the 2015 Asian Championships and bronze at the European Open in Minsk. He represented Asia at the 2014 ECCO Team Challenge. In 2016, he won bronze at the Czech Open in Prague and surprised with good performances at the Olympic Games in Rio.
