Yesterday our competitors competed at the AJP Zurich Open.
With more than 300 competitors it is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) bjj tournament in switzerland. This year is a truely special year and nothing seems to be normal, there were no spectactors allowed and all had to wear masks inside the sportsarena except the fighters during their fights. After a difficult competition preparation camp of 6 weeks, there were mixed feelings. The camp didn‘t go like planned and wasn‘t as successful as hoped. We had again some who got injured and some who didn‘t put in as much training as they should have...
The level of jiu jitsu in switzerland is very high, technically and physically you need to be on your best to be able to win as a competitor..
Daily training is the benchmark.
So my expectations after this camp were not that high and I expected an ass kicking and reality check for our competitors. Accordingly to that the competition day started not that good and Simon Scheuring @zymonic had a fair share of winning a fight and loosing the next two.. physically not on his best, it was a bitter pill to swallow loosing against opponents which could be beaten.. but Simon couldn’t leave the arena without a clear statement - so wait for a better end of this story. It seemed that it would be a very sad day for us @parabellumjiujitsu @gfteamzurich BUT then our competitors showed of what wood they are made of...! Sergey Bespalov @sergey_bsplv, Marcelli @celli_celli , Patrick Grossmann and Ali Djarar showed up and started to perform on a way that made me more than proud!!!! All of them showed great heart, fighting instinct, good technical level, and strategic smartness!
They performed far better than expected and almost all of them won medals, but more important all of them fought with great passion and represented our team on the best possible way! Even Simon, after a hard start into the day, had a great comeback and won his No Gi division along team mate Sergey with some great submissions on their way up to the podium!
Together they cleaned out their division and didn‘t let a chance for the other competitors in their division!
Great performances, great heart and and awesome memories!
Comments