South Africa’s judokas’ campaign to qualify for the Paris Olympic Games will start in earnest from next week when they compete at the World Championships in Doha.

So far, only Pretoria’s Commonwealth Games gold medalist, Michaela Whitebooi, is on track to compete in Paris. She is 29th on the International Judo Federation’s Olympic rankings. She is guaranteed to improve her ranking if she wins one or maybe two fights in Doha.

Whitebooi impressed last month during the Antalya Grand Slam Tournament in Turkey, winning three fights. It led to the Tuks judoka finishing seventh. The result made her coach Nikola Filipov smile.

“Michaela’s is a world-class performance. The best of the best competes at the Grand Slams. If Michaela can keep her cool, there is no reason why she can’t finish in the top eight at the World Champs,” said the satisfied coach.

When it comes to fighting, Filipov believes Whitebooi is good enough to hold her own against any of the World’s top 15 judokas in the under-48kg category.

“Unfortunately, her biggest weakness is that she often tends to make a mistake in the dying seconds of a bout. Judo is an unforgiving sport. Mistakes often lead to losing a fight,” Filipov explained.

When saying this, Filipov, who will be the South African national coach at the World Champs, genuinely gets passionate.

“All South African judokas competing at Worlds have a realistic chance to finish at the top eighth. But they probably won’t because of a lack of quality sparring partners. At Tuks, Michaela trains against 17 and 18-year-olds. The youngsters certainly benefit from duelling with Michaela, but it is not helping her. Michaela, and the rest of the national team, need to spar against judokas that will push them to the edge of their limits every day,” he remarked.

Filipov believes his first priority as a coach is to ensure his judokas are super fit and hone their technical skills. But it is not enough. They also need to be tactically savvy.

Whitebooi and another Tuks judoka, Charné Griesel, are currently at an international judo training camp in England, where they get to spar against some of the top judokas.

The South African judokas competing at the World Champs are all from Tuks. The team is Thomas Breytenbach, Michaela Whitebooi, Charne Griesel, Donne Breytenbach, Jasmine Martin and Anastasie Nenova.

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