Gstaad—Jeremy Clarke has wiped me out again, for a change. His accounts of the high jinks on board the Spectator cruise had the mother of my children laughing out loud, something she’s not known for among those of us who consider laughing loudly a staggering breach of taste. Never mind, Jeremy’s talents and abilities to describe indescribable situations in prose that makes the reader feel on hand is a badly kept secret among those of us who love good writing. The only thing wrong with Jeremy is that he shows me up week in, week out. And mind you, being the fall guy does not suit me one bit. Plus, I hope not to fall this week in Amsterdam, where I’m competing in the World Veterans Judo Championships. This is my last competition ever. I’ve said this before, but this time I mean it, just like the girl who said no to her first kiss opportunity.
The reason I’m quitting is the training. It’s getting much too hard. Last week I was in bed with the flu for four days, then my coach Brian arrived from New York and we went straight into it. Brian is 28, a student of the greatest judoka who ever lived, Yamashita Sensei, and fighting him is analogous to being dynamited by a sushi dish. He looks polite, friendly and smiling, until he throws you. You land rather hard. Judo requires great lung capacity. I’m a smoker and that’s what handicaps me during a tournament. I’m always out of breath, huffing and puffing against men who are mostly slower and weaker. But they tend to cling, hold, and somehow make my life miserable between fags and other exotic substances. It’s not a life, really, and I’m seriously contemplating becoming a bird-watcher at age 79.
Nevertheless, Amsterdam it is, and an added burden is that my son J.T. is coming over from Paris to watch his old man make a fool of himself. It is the first time I’ve had someone come to watch me compete, and it’s making me nervous as hell. And I know exactly how it’s going to end. I do not want to be thrown right away by a counter, so I will fight conservatively instead of doing it the Panzer way. But back to the training grind. The most important thing before a competition is the strategy. More often than not one enters the mat and gets flustered when the opponent attacks unconventionally. So what one does in training is to practice against left-handed and right-handed holds. My strategy is to respond to the opponent’s power arm with a stiff arm to their collar. This allows me to sense subtle shifts in weight, changes in direction, and resistance to determine the appropriate time to pull, push, and—most important—when to attack. Ah, but an attack leaves one open for a counter, unless it’s a perfect one. Every move has a counter and every counter has a counter, and on and on it goes, and the best man wins more often than not. Unless he’s a smoker and a lover of the high life and other terminological anachronisms like the good life. I won the world’s championship big-time in Brussels in 2008, and I say big-time because I threw my opponent in the final with a leg pick, my specialty, but then the crooks who run judo disallowed the throw, so now I feel a bit like that ghastly Lord Bristol must have felt once he had lost his stately home and all his moola. Just another face in the crowd. Bristol did the right thing and died soon after. I hope to keep going and will let you know the results next week.
