Neil Adams: evaluation

Transcript context

…So you’re a young kid, what? Like 19-20 at that time full of confidence, vigor. So the decision to cut weight, how hard was it for you to cut weight to the 71 kg division? I’ve got to say that it was the hardest because as I was going up, it was 73, then it was 74 kilos, 75. So I was moving through the weight category. It wasn’t like I was stuck in the middle and then I dropped the odd time to compete. It was literally going up in weight by a kilo every month. And then by the time I came to a month or two before the Olympics, it was really hard. Fought the European Championships at the higher weight category and won that. And so everybody that was on the Olympic rostrum at the Olympic Games was my rostrum at the European championships. So was it a mistake? Yeah, because I didn’t have my diet sorted out. My nutrition was appalling and when I, it wasn’t as kind of readily available as it is now for the nutrition. And I would say that if anything lost me that final, other than the fact that I was fighting somebody was terrific. He was an excellent, brilliant athlete, but definitely didn’t help that my nutrition was not very good. Okay, so you lost to Ezio Gamba. There’s probably a lot of that we could say about that particular match. Maybe let’s zoom in. What were your strengths and weaknesses, judo-wise in that Olympics? You said you haven’t really lost the match, you won the European Championship leading into it, but if you had weak spots, okay, you already said diet, but specifically on the mat in terms of judo.…

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