The world champion is going to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with the desire to add a medal to his trophy haul, an aspiration that also motivates his team-mate Ivan Silva.
«Paris 2024 is not far away and a good preparation will be vital to arrive in top form. And of course, with the desire to get the medal I’m missing,» reflected Andy Granda for JIT, just over a year ago.
With this, he expressed his desire to win the medal that is still missing from his list of medals (in addition to a world title, he has won three Pan American Games medals), perhaps the most desired by any athlete at the Olympic Games, which begins this Friday in the French capital.
The goal does not seem easy, it is far from being a stroll down the Champs Elysées. But who doubts that her talent is up to the task?
The fourth place Olympic ranking in the +100kg division will place him as one of the top seeds, which may clear the way for him to advance beyond the pool in which he will begin his competition.
However, that is no guarantee that on 2 August, when he takes to the tatami, he will have enough effort to reach the podium. Stars such as France’s Teddy Riner, Czech Lukas Krpalek, Japan’s Tatsuro Saito, Uzbekistan’s Alisher Yusupov and Brazil’s Rafael Silva were left out of the top four.
That ensures that he must face at least one of them to have a chance of reaching the semi-finals.
Riner, who is aiming for his fifth medal in these competitions – and his third individual gold medal – may face the Matancero, which, far from intimidating him, seems to be a motivation on the path he understands he has taken towards his goal.
«All the athletes in this division want to face him, because he is the greatest judo has ever produced, but he is one more to beat if you want to win an Olympic medal. That is very difficult because all the opponents are preparing with the same goal in mind and very few can achieve it,» added Andy in the above-mentioned exchange.
Ahead of him in the rankings are others such as Korea’s Minjong Kim, Temur Rakhimov of Tajikistan and Georgia’s Guram Tushishvili. None of them are unfamiliar to Granda, who remembers his victory over the latter in the quarter-finals of the Tashkent 2022 World Judo Championships.
All of which makes him reflect on the difficulties of winning in one of the strongest divisions of the event and one of the most watched.
Andy’s extraordinary talent alone would not make him a contender for a medal among so many stellar performers. He earns that through his steely discipline and unwavering will.
Just as strong, but above all more evenly matched, may the 90 kg level appear at the Parisian competition, a division in which Cuban Iván Silva also qualified. Like his teammate, he knows what it’s like to smile on a world championship podium, having won the silver medal at the Baku 2018 edition.
To take Silva out of the equation for his first Olympic medal would be as bold as to say he would achieve it.
Perhaps because of his ninth place in the Olympic rankings and the parity of those entered in the competition, predictions are highly complex, but Ivan has shown the ability to overcome any contingency.
The bronze medal he won at the Antalya Grand Slam 2024, held a couple of months ago, against none other than the strong Uzbek Dalvat Bovonov, shows his potential.
His gold medal at the Grand Prix in Upper Austria earlier this year, beating the Spanish world medallist Tristsni Mosakhlishvili in the final, also proves his potential.
In fact, together with Granda, he was the most stable Cuban throughout the season, reaching the decisive stages in most of the tournaments in which he participated.
Optimism does not boost confidence in these cases, because the extreme difficulty of reaching the podium at this level is recognised, and the real possibilities of achieving it are assessed. In both cases, they have shown that they can overcome such challenges.
