On some days, things just don’t go your way. Kosovo’s Laura Fazliu, an Olympic, World and European medalist and one of the favorites in the -63kg at the European Senior Championships Tbilisi 2026, was caught by surprise in her first contest of the day and was eliminated.
“I was prepared a lot for this competition, but it wasn’t a good day,“ Fazliu shared. “I had bad luck. There was a score in the first second and it was harder to come back from that.” Failure is part of the game. It is about getting up and coming back stronger.
“Every time I am not having a good performance, of course I am sad for some days but I learn a lot from my loss and I am trying all the time to improve my mistakes,” Fazliu said and she is already setting her eyes on the next goals. “For me it’s important to improve these mistakes for the World Championships and the Olympic Games. I am preparing for them and all the other competitions are just tests for the World Championships. I am finding my motivation in having one goal. On the journey towards that goal, I will make some mistakes of course as this is a sport, but I know that I will be on the top again.”
Defeats teach you more than victories on your path and the Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallist knows that. She takes from her experience in Tbilisi that she should be more relaxed, not get the stress to her. “Today I didn’t feel good because I had some pressure that came from myself,” Fazliu noted. “I learned that it’s better to enjoy and give my best. I was very prepared for this competition but this little stress or pressure led to me not being so focused in the first seconds of the first fight.”
Fazliu feels lucky to have a great role model, teammate and friend at her side, the Olympic and European Champion Distria Krasniqi. They two not only train together in the same club, they are roommates at their events and just best friends.
“We have a lot of good times, good memories together,” Krasniqi said. “We push each other to achieve more and more. We help each other a lot. And we know each other’s opponents.“
The two top judoka learn from each other and work together to achieve their goals.
“Of course, I took a lot of medals, but I still have to improve,” Krasniqi pointed out. “I am still looking forward to learning new things. Laura does different things. She’s very strong, very powerful. She has different techniques, so I’m trying to learn from her.”
„On the judo technique side, I’m learning from Distria how to work more on my sasai technique”, Fazliu said. “And when we are rooming together, I always skips breakfast because Distria never eats breakfast, so I learned this from her,” she added, laughing.
Krasniqi and Fazliu keep moving forward together and if one of them has a bad day, the other one is there for her to support her, get up again and come back stronger.
Author: Szandra Szogedi