Nomura Tadahiro wins gold in the Swiss Open at age 38 !

Three-time Olympic gold medalist Nomura Tadahiro the past weekend won gold in Geneva during the Swiss Open.

In this way, at age 38 (since Dec 2012) he joins the small club of "old men jûdôka" with illustrious predecessors such as Vitali Kuznetsov and Robert Van De Walle who still won medals in international tournaments at such advanced age.

It remains to be seen how long he will be able to continue this since physiological parameters, such as VO2 max decline with age. However, being a lightweight who has not been weight-cycling, he has some advantages over his predecessors, since VO2 max is related to lean body mass. Aerobic endurance, and particularly VO2 max is but one factor in successful competitive jûdô. With increasing age even if he is able to maintain high VO2max for some time, enzymatic recovery will decrease over time which likely is to affect him in case he has to go through several long and heavy contests on his way to the final. Experience and strategic insight will be his strong points over jûdôka nearly half his age.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2013/03/25/more-sports/nomura-earns-win-in-return-to-judo/#.UVMAvTfJKdF

Unfortunately, this is only a highlight real, not his complete matches.
And Nomura *looks* like he "cut" weight

Found some links to his matches, no idea if this is all of them:






From the alljudoTV channel.

I saw his fights. Man, being in such a shape at the age of 38 and competing with all those youngsters is impressive. I always liked Nomura and I wish him all the best, so taht he can overcome the problems CK-sensei addressed as long as it's possible. Frankly I don't see him at the Rio Olympics. He will be 40 by then so it will be very hard for him to qualify. But he's an excellent judoka for sure and I'm happy to see him in competition once again.

BTW AllJudo is a great channel. Lots of nice judo there. Lots of the content is in French, but not the highlight reels from different tournaments. They did some nice coverage of some 'masters' tournaments and some epic throwing by some of the competitors