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Author: Tatjana Flade
The morning after winning his first European Championship title Danil Lavrentev was right back on the mat in the warm up area as if nothing special had happened, training and helping his teammates to prepare for their competition.
“I didn’t even yet answer all those people that congratulated me, which I feel bad about. I wrote to a lot of people but my phone exploded with messages,” he said. “I don’t have time to relax now because I will compete in the mixed team here and the next serious competition, the World Championship, is comping up. So I came here this morning to train.”
Lavrentev, 22, is a busy young man but he enjoys what he is doing.
It all started back in the town of Kurgan in the Ural mountains. Lavrentev’s father Oleg, a former sambo fighter and coach, put his sons Denis and Danil into the sport. “At first, I did sambo and judo, but when I grew up I had to choose and I chose judo, as it is an Olympic sport,” the new European Champion explained.
Brother Denis, who is 15 years older than Danil, went on to become the U23 European Champion back in 2010. He is retired by now and Danil continues the family tradition in spectacular manner.
“I really like this sport, judo, even though often it doesn’t work out. You try to stay motivated. But when results come, then you like the sport twice as much”, Lavrentev shared with a smile. “If I continue to fight like that, I probably can do it for a long time.”
The 22-year-old, who describes himself as “calm, good-natured and goal-oriented”, is just at the beginning of his career and already has seen a lot of success. Interestingly, he skipped the usual path through the cadet and junior ranks but jumped right into the seniors. “I never competed in juniors or cadets, I never got in there, because of Covid or something else, so I just started with the seniors. I had my eyes set at the senior national team right away. I wanted to fight with the strongest athletes and to prove something to myself.”
The young judoka sees his strength in his functionality and his endurance. He can last through grueling Golden Score contests. Since he trained his ne waza skills a lot with his father as a child, he feels this is another strength of him, but he has been working on other techniques as well and is happy that he won his first title by displaying different techniques. “I got to do ground techniques and standing techniques.”
Lavrentev feels he has overcome many of his weaknesses from the past. “I made kid’s errors in the finals, maybe because of a lack of experience. I haven’t been competing internationally a lot. These Europeans were probably the first competition where I was able to fix all my mistakes. I’m a completely different fighter now,” he pointed out.
The young judoka feels especially motivated by his father, his older brother, the older teammates and coaches. “We have lots of Olympic Champions and World Champions among our coaches and athletes, for example Arsen Galstyan, the 2012 Olympic Champion in the -60kg. Tamerlan Bashaev is an Olympic bronze medallist from Paris 2024. You look at these people and you get active, you want to be like them and not fall behind.”
In the little spare time he has, Lavrentev likes to play tennis, table tennis and a little football with his teammates and coaches. The student splits his time between his hometown and the national training base in Sochi. “The best way to relax for me he is to go to the sauna, to be at home with my parents or to be outside, at a lake,” he shared.
Lavrentev loves doing judo but he feels at home in this sport for more than just training and competing. “I like this judo family, how everyone is socialising and is friends which each other,” the newly minted European Champion noted. “You find new friends, you meet people from other countries and become friends with them. You can go visit them, for example in Greece I have friends. This friendly brotherhood is something that I really like.”
Author: EJU Media