By Lisette van der Geest
It’s ‘Journal Time’. That much had been the intention of judoka Jur Spijkers a while ago, that much became clear on Sunday in Sofia. At the European Championships, Spijkers (25) defeated all the heavyweights he encountered, including the vice-Olympic champion, and he immediately gave a message. “I’ve been standing in a kind of waiting room long enough.”
In recent years he was the first reserve. The number three, behind Henk Grol and Roy Meyer, two warring Dutch heavyweights who could not air or see each other and both preyed on the one Olympic ticket to Tokyo last summer. And Spijkers waited. The main international competitions have two starting spots, the Olympics only one. ,,So if one of them didn’t want to do a certain tournament, I was only allowed to participate.”