Team SA Judo player Michaela Whitebooi’s participation in Tokyo is a triumph in itself. If she progresses past the first round it would be a magnificent achievement for the 25-year-old.
Michaela Whitebooi’s face lights up when she talks about fighting. “Ooh, I love it! I love the training, putting the body through the extremes. Getting ready to fight. The body hurts, it really hurts. Judo’s a tough sport. And yes, I’ve often thought about how I would do in the UFC. I love watching it. The violence, the pain. The thing is you have to inflict the pain, not be on the receiving end.”She walks around in her sandals not even 1.
This will be Filipov’s fourth Olympics with Team SA, starting in Beijing 2008, while it’s his first with Whitebooi, who he has been coaching for 11 years.Whitebooi hails from Gqeberha but now calls Pretoria home, where she is enrolled at Tuks. She is used to pain and hardship and has spent more than half her life without a father. It has been her mom, Minnie, who was employed as a domestic worker and who kept things together when they could so easily have fallen apart.
Even though a fight is four minutes long — longer if scores are level and it goes to a Golden Score — Whitebooi says it feels a lot longer. “The fact that she’s here, essentially the top 32 in the world, is an incredible achievement. And she’s still just 25. In three years, at the Paris Games, she will be at her physical peak aged 28. I honestly expect her to win a medal at Paris 2024.
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