What can be said about Shady El Nahas?
Since arriving in Canada he has waited patiently for his opportunity to represent the Maple Leaf, often described as Canada's best kept secret for many years. Unsurprisingly he wasted no time in making waves in the world of international judo and emphatically burst onto the IJF World Tour in 2018.
A slew of podium finishes and gold medals soon followed and quickly put him in the driving seat for 2020 Olympic qualification. His stellar performance at last month's world championships secured his place on Team Canada, edging out team mate Kyle Reyes in the process.
The stage was set for this young man, an olympic debut at Tokyo 2020 in the Nippon Budokan and he delivered a performance worthy of celebrating!
Shady's dynamic attacking judo is a threat for every opponent he stands across the tatami from and he quickly showed why by defeating UAE's Ivan Remarenco with a well timed attack and swift newaza transition to pin his opponent for ippon.
He continued his assault by overwhelming Azerbaijan's Zelym Kotsoiev, seemingly throwing him at will and scoring two wazaris to progress to the quarter final.
A tense and tactical match ensued against the current world number one from Georgia, Varlem Liparteliani ending with the victory going to his European opponent.
This loss moved him to a repecharge match against Peter Paltchik from Israel. From the moment Shady stepped onto the tatami, he was a man on a mission. With the match tied after regulation time, El Nahas really showed his class by throwing the Israeli for Ippon with a beautiful o-uchi-gari after 45 seconds of golden score to move him into the Bronze medal match.
His opponent was current double world champion Jorge Fonseca from Portugal.
The pair had met on three previous occasions with the twenty three old Canadian having beaten his opponent twice before. Shady began the match dominating the kumi-kata, pressuring his opponent into conceding several penalties over the match and moving towards taking his opponent into golden score. With 45 seconds left in the match Fonseca scored wazari and despite relentless pressure from El Nahas, the Portugese managed to wind down the clock and deny Shady a podium finish.
What can be said is that over the whole day Shady was exciting, daring, confident and undeniably worthy of more. We are incredibly proud of him, his performance and how he represents Canada. There is no doubt that there is more to come from this exceptional individual and we look forward to supporting and cheering him onto Olympic glory in three years time.
Bring on Paris 2024!!!
You can watch all his matches through the links below:
Preliminaries
Final Block
See link below for article and well wishes from The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre