The Paris Grand Slam will mark this weekend the beginning of the final stretch to complete the tickets in judo for the next summer's Olympics Games in Paris.
As it’s known, the places will be distributed equally between men and women and the main way to obtain them is the World Ranking, which will reward the 17 best in each division, without repeating the country of origin.

It’s worth remembering that the ranking serves not only to classify, but also to determine the draw for the competition, so even those who already feel mathematically secure cannot rest assured to guarantee a better draw in the competition.

In the Cuban case, at the moment four athletes are within positions, two men and two women, including those who will be our main summer medal hopes: Iván Silva (90 kgs), Andy Granda (+100), Maylín del Toro (63) and Idalys Ortiz (+78) with special highlight for Granda, who with position five guarantees even having a comfortable draw in the competition.

Magdiel Estrada (73) is in 21st place, but has more than a representative of Georgia and Uzbekistan ahead of him, so a good performance in Paris puts him completely into the fight, as happens with Maylín and Idalys, which also close in the positions guaranteeing a pass into the Olympic Games following the ranking.

The classification at 60, 66, 81 and 100 looks very complicated for men and 48, 52, 57, 70 and 78 for women, and the route in these cases would be the Pan American tournament.
Although the World Tour events begin to be counted since June 24, 2022, this will be the decisive period, with a closing date of June 23, 2024, since the last 12 months account for the total units obtained, while the previous ones add up only half.

As a Grand Slam, the event in the City of Light is one of those that contributes the most to the list (one thousand points for gold), and the same will happen with those of Baku (February 16-18), Tashkent (March 1-3), Tbilisi (March 22-24), Antalya (March 29-31), Kazakhstan (May 10-12) and the championship Abu Dhabi World Cup (May 19-23).
In addition to these competitions, in which Cuba must ensure presence in most of them, it’s already known that we will also venture into others of Grand Prix category (seconds with the most units), plus the continental event.

Each continent also has an invitation quota for the teams competition, and the latter can help a nation that only has five judokas classified for Paris 2024, giving them the option to qualify a sixth athlete and thus be able to have a full roster and participate in the mixed team event.

On our continent, Brazil must add more than six tickets, and no other nation must reach five between the two sexes, so we have great possibilities there to add another representative.

Then comes the time to adjust the judogi as much as possible and give it your all in each match, because all points are important in this long-run fight.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff