Thank you for thinking of me 
It’s incredible, of course. There’s a lot of penalty play this Olympics, but then again there’s always been lots of penalty play — just that I couldn’t see it when I was more novice, before the Judo experiment.
And the other thing that I didn’t appreciate — that my coach had been telling me again and again — is that “this is the Olympics, anything can happen.” Now I do, though: because the stakes are so high, things you don’t expect to happen do happen. Like the undefeatable Uta Abe getting thrown in an early round, and then her breaking down in front of everyone right as she got off the mat. That took everyone by surprise.
The other thing that has the whole Judo world chattering is the -60kg fight between Nagayama (Japan) and Garrigos (Spain). Nagayama was the top contender going in (not the top seed; world rankings don’t matter as much because Japan forces its national team to skip a few tournaments leading up to the Olympics, so they tend to drop on the points table). But in his match with Garrigos, Garrigos started a choke. The ref called for a stop. Garrigos continued choking for another four seconds. Nagayama passed out. The ref saw that Nagayama had passed out, and awarded the whole match to Garrigos — thus ending Nagayama’s chance for gold and leaving the field wide open to everyone else.
The sad thing is that the Olympics is the biggest achievement in Judo — pretty much everything else pales in comparison — and Nagayama is old; near the end of his competitive career. For much of his life he had the misfortune of being born in the same era and under the shadow of Naohisa Takato, his fellow Japanese fighter, the Olympic champion in -60kg in the last Olympics, and an exciting, dynamic, possibly legendary fighter. This was the first (and possibly only) Olympics Nagayama would get to fight at … and he lost his shot at gold due to a controversial (and possibly bad) call.
So … Yeldos Smetov of Kazakhstan won gold. It was nuts. Smetov is old (31) and considered way past his prime — when he stepped onto the mat the commentator (former world champion Neil Adams, who himself knows a thing or two about injury): “Smetov … is the most injured man in Judo. This man is held together with tape.”
And he won.
There’s a lot of drama like that, but I’ll spare you. I will say that to a Judo player’s eye, the most masterful win was Nagase vs Grigalashvilli in the -81kg category. That was beautiful Judo; Nagase made the match look like it was just another day at the neighbourhood dojo.