Tuks’ judo twins both crowned national champions
Pretoria's highly regarded judo twins again emphasized their potential in this sport with brilliant performances at the recent South African Open Championship.
The well-known judo-twins from TuksSport High School, Thomas and Donné Breytenbach, both won gold medals at the recent South African Open Judo Championship.
The South African Open is the highlight of the judo calendar for judokas in South Africa. This year it was held in Bloemfontein during the past school holidays.
Preparation for this tournament is usually at the same time as mid-year exams and can be a very difficult and stressful time for younger judokas like the twins. They have to balance study and gym and judo time to make the most of academics and be fully prepared for the tournament.
The twins are learners at TuksSport High School, where they can indulge their love of judo while still maintaining their schoolwork on a very high academic standard.
Their training schedule consist of morning gym before school, afternoon fitness or gym and judo training in the evenings for five days a week. On Saturdays they have gym and judo training. Their coach, Nikola Filipov, head judo coach at Tuks Sport, expects them to give their best at all times. He works out a training schedule for each judoka and drives them to give 100%.
In May this year the twins were part of the National Team participating at the Cadet Africa tournament in Egypt. Donné won a silver medal, while Thomas was fifth in his division. They were very satisfied with their results as they had just turned 15 and are the youngsters in the cadet category of 15 – 17 year olds. This tournament gave them the experience to go into the SA Open with confidence.
The South African Open had a lot of entries from Southern African countries this year. There were judokas from Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and the Congo.
According to the Breytenbach twins it was exciting to have to compete against opponents you have never fought before, because you cannot plan your fight.
“You do not know their style or which techniques they prefer to use. Coach Nikola guided us through every fight and we both ended up fighting in the final for the title of National Champion. Being well prepared by Coach Nikola we both managed to win our categories in the final,” said Thomas.
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