Judo coach Driton Kuka has said that Kosovo’s performance so far at the Olympic Games in Paris can be described as exceptional and very emotional for all competitors and coaches.

He praised Distria Krasniqi and Laura Fazliu for their successes, saying that their dedication to work brought these results.

“It is an exceptional record, an extremely good record for Kosovo, a trend of Olympic medals for our country is continuing, it started in Rio, continued in Tokyo and now in Paris, extraordinary, exciting, these are days which actually each day has its own stories. Distria started well, she went to the finals, she lost in the finals but she was excellent, she has entered the history of the sport of judo in the world, she is one of the rare competitors, if not the only one who has Olympic medals in both different categories for girls”, said Kuka.

He also spoke about the failure of Akil Gjakova to win an Olympic medal

“Akil Gjakova is that story which makes me personally feel extremely negative emotions because he deserved the Olympic medal, maybe even the gold one. He fought like a lion, he fought with the … of the world judo, he was impressive, attractive, all the media wrote about his performance, he reached the semi-finals in the best possible way”, emphasized Kuka.

The bronze medal won by Laura Fazliu, Kuka says that beyond the commitment of the judoka from Mitrovica, luck was also on Kosovo’s side in this case, especially in the final fight.

“Laura was the opposite of Akil even though she wasn’t on her best day, even though the huge mental load of winning medals meant she wasn’t more than 60 percent of herself, but she was lucky, and in the fight with the Canadian she was at a very high level, with the Chinese she won with a very even fight, but for a shade she was better… In the fight for the medal, a fight that went all the way to overtime when they had two of two penalties, there was an action by Laura which the Croatian contestant countered in the wrong way because leg grabs are already prohibited.” Kuka further stated.

Kuka was very happy with the fulfillment of his goal of winning five Olympic medals.

“After the victory of Distria, I thought all the time that maybe something will stop the fulfillment of my great desire for the fifth medal, to fill those Olympic rings. Whatever happened happened, and I’m very happy, it means the fifth medal has been fulfilled for me as a coach, but first of all for Kosovo, for our new state for which we work and act”, said Kuka in the end.

From the sport of judo, judoka Loriana Kuka has not yet competed.