On Thursday 12th July 2018 Budokan Judo Club held its 13th post-Nationals presentation in which we acknowledged the efforts of all Budokan athletes who qualified for the NSW State team to the Nationals and also made presentations to all Gold medal winners. This year, we welcomed 3 special guests: Dr Michelle Byrne - Hills Shire Mayor, The Hon Alex Hawke MP, Federal Member for Mitchell and Assistant Minister for Home Affairs, and the President of Judo NSW, Mr Nic Lowe. This year’s Nationals saw some milestones reached from Budokan’s participation in the past 17 National Championships; namely, that our athletes have: entered 524 divisions, won the club’s 300th National medal; and broken through the 100 mark with 107 Gold medals won. In the 2018 Nationals, 27 Budokan athletes competed in 34 contest divisions. They won 20 medals: 8 x Gold, 3 x Silver, and 9 x Bronze. Our 4 Kata participants won another 6 medals taking our total to 26 medals: 10 x Gold, 4 x Silver, and 12 x Bronze medals. A number of our athletes could not participate in this year’s Nationals due to injury or illness. We believe that these athletes would have added at least 10 medals to our total tally and also increased the Gold medal count by 5 to 7. Although the number of divisions entered by our athletes (excluding Kyu Grades, Special Needs and Kata) was down 35% on last year, we still made up just under 20% of the entire NSW State Squad, and contributed 25% of NSW’s Gold medals and 20% of NSW’s total medal tally. Congratulations to these athletes and to all those Budokanis who stepped up to the challenge by representing NSW and Budokan Judo Club at the 2018 Nationals. Individual results are attached.
