‘Outstanding’ event marks historic return

Friday 4th April 2008, 2:29PM BST.

Gold medallist Cody Dorey, right, attempts to throw an opponent. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 0557314)

THE first judo championship to be held in Guernsey for nearly 20 years took place on Sunday.

A total of 40 boys and seven girls stepped onto the new full-size mat at Beau Sejour for the Channel Islands Junior Championships.

The competition was also the first to be organised by the recently formed Guernsey Judo Association, which acts as an umbrella over the island’s three clubs – the Guernsey Judo Club, the Rising Sun School of Judo and Judo Frascati. The sport had gone through a lengthy bad patch and at one point there were no clubs in the Bailiwick.

‘It was another excellent affair,’ said the chairman of the Guernsey Judo Club, Mitch Agnelli, who also a referee at the competition.