The Tribune

THREE members of the Bahamas’ judo team produced outstanding performances at the Florida Yudanshakai (black belt tournament) in Orlando this weekend.

Cynthia Rahming 20, won two golds in the women’s lightweight and middleweight divisions.

Kentico Forbes 18, won a gold and a silver in the men’s middleweight and heavyweight division and Joshua Mcfall 18, won two bronze medals in the men’s lightweight and middleweight divisions.

“I am particularly pleased with Kentico’s peformance as he has only been training for nine months,” said coach D’Arcy Rahming Jr.

“All three athletes trained in Cuba over the summer. Cynthia also took what she learned from the Commonwealth Games in Scotland along with her training with Olympians in the US during the summer and turned in an extremely impressive performance.”

The Florida tournament was used as a warm-up to test some new strategies that will be used at the upcoming major tournaments.

The Bahamas judo team is preparing for the Pan American Cup which is a qualifier for the Pan Am Games.

The event is slated to be held in Barbados October 4-5 and the World Junior Champions on October 23.

“We’ve definitely crossed some barriers where we are now winning the majority of our matches regionally. Now we need to translate this to wins at world level tournaments. I believe this is due to high performance training with new methodologies from the IJF Academy,” said coach Rahming, who is a recent graduate of the level 1 course of the IJF academy in Hungary.

Persons interested in joining judo programmes can contact the Bahamas Judo Federation at tallstarbahamas@gmail.com