June 2008

Day 2 - Results

Today, Mike Sexton, Aaron Scott & Lance Wicks competed.

Aaron fought a a Brazilian in the first round, where it went to golden score and Aaron lost on a penalty. His second match was against a Russian, which went Wazari-Awasete against Aaron.

Mike, fought a French man in the first round (loss), Englishman in second round (win) and a Brazilian in the third (loss).

Lance, fought a Morocan in the first round and lost by Yuko (osae komi). The Morocan went on to be a finalist. His second was against a Frenchman where Lance caught him for Ippon with a Ura Nage. Finally he fought another Frenchman who unfortunately caught him for Ippon with a left Taio Toshi.

This evening we are heading out to have a couple of drinks with the New Zealanders in Belgium club, who kindly invited us to their monthly pub night, then tomorrow we shall be there to watch Mike Ritson compete.

Day 1 _ results.

Hi All,

Team NZ picked up two medals at the World Masters today!
Pat Toner got the national anthem played for us, GOLD!.

The second medal was not technically ours, we claim as ours despite the fact it technically went to Great Britain.
Joyce Malley, won her division! Now Joyce is not a Kiwi, but she has been living in Auckland for quite a while now, so we claim that medal for ourselves too! ;-)

Tomorrow Aaron & Lance compete in the -90 and -100 divisions, more medals?

Good night!

2008 World Masters Day 1

Hi Everyone,

well the team has all arrived safe and well in Brussels

Here is a quick (sideways) photo of the outside of the venue.

News from the trip - Live

As we travel we shall try and update as much as we can via twitter ( www.twitter.com ).

We have received offical sanction!

We are really pleased to have received an email this morning from the president of the NZ Judo Federation offically approving our team!

Here is the important bit of the email:

"... Please accept this email as a formal approval for your team to represent New Zealand in the upcoming World Masters and Good Luck to you all..."

This has come directly from Harry O'Rourke, President of the New Zealand Judo Federation.
This is great news for the team and Harry's support is a real boost just before we compete!!!

T-Shirts and our billions!

Hi Everyone,

this will probably be the last communication on the Blog until we arrive in Brussels.
And it has some great news contained within it!

Steph (from the facebook group) & Aaron have managed to get some t-shirts done at the last moment, after the previous plans fell through due to... well due to budget cuts. :(

AWESOME!!!

Maybe we'll be able to pay them back for their awesome efforts, seeing as someone has just made us a serious offer of $20 Billion as a donation!!
That's a serious offer from someone by the way! $20 Billion!!!

Shame it is Zimbabwe money and is worth I think about twenty pounds!!

Seriously though, the donation is really REALLY REALLY appreciated! As are they all, we shall be writing individually to all donors and thanking them and shall also publish a list here on the blog.
Every penny helps this little team, so thank you so much to all the current donors and to everyone who donates after we post this!

So... till Brussels then!

Fundraising email...

Hello visitors!

Today Lance emailed a large number of people who he had in his email inbox, and the hit rate has leapt for this site since then.
So hello recipients of Lance's email... He assures us that it was a one off email and that he has even deleted the list of addresses now.

If you do feel it in your heart to help support our little team of Judoka, please do "chipin" via the box on the right.
Every penny/cent received is really appreciated! Seriously, every dollar/pound/euro helps !

We are still welcoming to partnering with sponsors, we will to be frank do almost anything we can to make it worth your while.

Anyway... thanks for popping by!

Lance

Get your merchandise here!!!

Okay, the plan to have shirts for the event has gone the way of the Dodo, unfortunately the lack of sponsorship has limited budgets and as such having team clothing has been cancelled. Sorry everyone!

However... the idea lives on and may even help us fundraise.

I have been playing at some designs and you can even order them online!

Head over to SpreadShirt and take a look.

World famous in NZ - Thanks JudoKong.com

Our friends at the Auckland University Judo Club have been in touch, (Hi Rick!).
And have sent some nice words of encouragement.

Not only that but they have included Mike's request for donations on their site, thanks everyone!

So do visit www.judokong.com and enjoy a irreverent take on a Judo Blog!

By the way, did we ever mention how much we like the club slogan?! Truely the slogan of a Judo club if ever we heard one.

And we are kiwis again!

We are pleased to let everyone know that we are again Kiwis (New Zealanders).

The postman has delivered our NZL back patches, replacing the ENG ones we received originally.

The Gi unboxing!

Hi Everyone, well the new suits arrived from Toraki and they look great!

On Saturday night some of us met up in London for a meal and to hand over the suits, so that the mass washing could begin. Toraki recommend at least 8 washes till the suits settle to their "normal" size. So given the short period between now and the World Masters, getting into the washing cycle is really important.

Anyway, here are some photos of the new suits, let us know what you think, our thanks have to go to Stewart at Toraki who has helped get these suits done for us, thanks mate!

Team NZ Players train with two time Olympian.

Aaron & MikeR have been training hard and their preparation has included training with Two Time Olympian and friend of the Team, Daniel Gowing.

Daniel fought both the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics and is very well known to most people in New Zealand Judo I am sure.

Below is a photo from the training session:

Suits are on their way!

TeamBath + TeamNZjudo + Combined Services Judo team = a good night!

T-Shirt Design... how do you like it?

Mike over at http://www.thejudopodcast.com sent this through today!

How Mike an American knew about the saying "She'll be right" I do not know, but what do you think of this design on the back of a Black T-Shirt?
We are just looking at where we can get it online fastest.

TeamBath Randori - 9 June 2008

Hi all,

as part of our final build up to the 2008 Judo World Masters some members of the team shall be attending the Monday night Randori session at Univerity of Bath this Monday, 9th of June.

If you are available that evening and able to be in Bath we would love to meet up with you there, let us know!

The Kindness of strangers!

As part of the build up top the World Masters, we have contacted the NZ Embassy in Belgium, and the results of that are proving amazing!

We contacted the Embassy, who put us in contact with the NZ'ers in Belgium club/group.
They in turn emailed the entire group about our visit and we have received emails and invitations from various people offering to meet with us, take us on tours, even take us Judo training. We are going to be writing back to them all this week, to let people knw what our exact schedule is and to thank them all and to accept as much of their generosity as we can.

Sadly, our time in Brussels is limited, we fly in on Thursday and fly out again on the Sunday.
So it does not look like we can accept all the invitations unfortunately.

But it impresses us once again the kindness and generosity other have been showing our little team.

Thanks to everyone who has been in contact, individual replies shall be sent out as soon as we can.

Thanks so much!

The Team.

Update: Here is the link to the NZersinBelgium site: http://newzealandersinbelgium.blogspot.com/