A nation for just 14 years: already three Olympic golds
Kosovo declared itself independent in 2008. The Balkan nation made its Olympic debut at Rio in 2016, with eight athletes in five sports. At the Tokyo Games, it sent 11 athletes, in six sports. In Rio, the judo star Majlinda Kelmendi won gold. In Tokyo, two more judo standouts, Distria Krasniqi and Nora Gjakova, also won gold. All three of them had a scholarship from Olympic Solidarity.
That’s one small country, one special sport and three gold medals — more gold medals in judo than, say, the United States has won. Or any of these have won: Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Hungary or the Czech Republic. Or many others.“We may be a small country,” Gjakova said, “but we always had big ambitions.”
Daulina Osmani, the country’s deputy sports minister, said, “The three Olympic medals show that if opportunities are given to our youth — we excel.”
The big ambitions that Kosovo has achieved on the tatami can be traced, in large measure, to a singular figure — the coach Driton ‘Toni’ Kuka, and his school in the small western mountain town of Peja. Scholarships from Olympic Solidarity played a part, too. “I felt I had to work,” Gjakova said, “because someone is supporting me.” In Rio, Kelmendi fulfilled her — and her nation’s -- destiny with Olympic gold in the 52-kilo class. The pandemic forced Kosovo to wait five years for more.
Krasniqi, whose friends call her Disi, has competed over the years at both 52 and 48 kilos. In Tokyo, it was 48, and in the finals, at the spiritual home of judo, the Budokan, built for the first Olympic judo competition in 1964, fate would have it that Disi met Japan’s Funa Tonaki, the 2017 world champion. Disi, 1-0. “If the Olympics had been in 2020,” Disi said, “I don’t think I would have been so ready mentally. During quarantine days, our team didn’t stop training … so for me that extra year was a good thing.”
Nora, a good friend, watched Disi’s gold-medal match on her phone. When Disi won, Nora said, “It felt really great and gave me a lot of power. I started to cry from happiness.” She added about her own matches two days later, at 57 kilos, “I didn’t feel any pressure. ... I just had to keep myself calm and believe.” All the way to an ippon — a match-ending throw — in the finals over France’s Sarah-Leonie Cysique. “There were a lot of mixed feelings I had when I was on top of the podium,” she said. “I felt so lightweight, proud, empty, relieved, happy, exhausted, scared — everything, together.”
In Kosovo, Nora’s gold took on special meaning in part because of the timing. She won on Monday. On Sunday, a bus travelling from Germany to Kosovo swerved off the road in Croatia; 10 Kosovars were killed. President Vjosa Osmani, in Japan for the Olympics, immediately flew home.
A year later, Nora said, she is celebrated virtually everywhere she goes in her small nation, the one with outsized ambitions.“They always share stories about my win.“Or Distria and Majlinda.“And still you can feel the emotions when they speak. “It’s great,” she said, “to be able to create such strong emotions in people’s minds.”