Neil Adams
speaker
376 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2024
last heard Apr 2024
Neil Adams’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
That was my first Olympic Games. So my preparation was a little bit different to how it was the 84 and the 88 Olympic Games. And I'd kind of done part of the preparation as well for 76 Olympic Games. I wasn't quite old enough for those, but I was first reserve. So in 1980, I'd had four years build up.
And I was hungry and I was one of these young athletes and I see them so often now that was developing and, you know, full of, I won't say full of myself, but I was certainly confident of my ability and I wanted to conquer the world. And I'd had a couple of really tight matches with the current Olympic world champion.
So I knew that there was a possibility that I could get there for the 80 Olympics. So building up to the 80 Olympics was quite interesting because I was kind of coming through the weights and I was halfway in between the 71 kilos weight category and the higher weight category of 78 kilograms.
And I got third place at the 79 World Championships, the weight below, for the whole year at the higher weight category. Didn't lose a contest. So I'd beaten everybody in the world. And then I had to make a decision as to whether to drop weight. to the weight below because I was seeded in the weight below. It was a different seeding then.
And so I decided to drop into the weight below because I was seeded in the top four. And as it happens, I think it was probably the worst decision I made. Well, because, simply because, I mean, it was the only contest that I lost was the final of the Olympic Games in that year.
I've got to say that it was the hardest because as I was going up, I was, you know, 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 on 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, you know, 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 who was terrific, you know, he was an excellent, brilliant athlete. But it definitely didn't help that my nutrition was not very good.
I think that none of the fights lasted time going into the final, you know. So I won fairly quickly, and every match by Ippon, you know, way before time.
I won them by throw, a couple of throws for Ippon, and then an armlock for Ippon. Semi-final was an armlock against the East German, Kruger. And, yeah, just I was flying through, you know.
Taitoshi Uchimata, my favorite kind of takuwaza, my favorite throws. And then Jujikatami as well, which was a Jujikatami roll against an East German who I'd beaten before, but always had a really tough match, but managed to beat him well.
Like I say, taking nothing away from him as a great athlete and a brilliant judo man. And left, which wasn't good for me. That was definite no, because I hated fighting lefties. Still do. But I'll tell you why in a minute.
It's one of those. But I think... As I went through the contest, we had an eight-hour break from the semifinal to the final. They took us back to the Olympic Village. Then we had to come back in, and then we had to start a warm-up again. So I kind of lost my momentum. I had to start again, and I didn't. I had a job to get going.
I got halfway through, started to rescue a dying match, and I was kind of one step, half a step behind all the way through. So I never really got into it.
Well, you know, the thing is about a lefty is a lefty will have more opportunity to fight righties, you know, right-handers. Because, I mean, 70% of the population are right-handers, 30% left. So they get to fight more right-handers. And it's just a fact, you know, that happens. So the thing that they hate is fighting left against left. They don't like it left against left.
Whereas a right-hander will go right against right. But the opposite is awkward for me because just simply I like to go onto the sleeve and then I like to dominate the grips. But the actual angle of the opponent wasn't what I wanted. So I had to work really hard against it.
It was a split decision in the end. And so to lose an Olympic final on a split decision is pretty, you know, it's something that's still on my mind. And, you know, I think that it's a strange one because I can still wake up that one and four years later at the Olympics because I was silver medalist at the Olympics four years later as well. And yeah, it still haunts me.
I do. I mean, the diet side of it, it's difficult to really admit that, isn't it? That you went to an Olympic Games. And the one thing that you really sucked at, right, was one of the most important things now at world level sport, you know, where you've got the nutrition, you know, we've got it. You would think that most people have got it sorted, but there's still people making mistakes.
There's still people that haven't got it totally sorted. Yeah.
That's a good way of looking at it. I never, yeah. Maybe that's what I did. Yeah, exactly.
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