Team GB judoka Nekoda Smythe-Davis was beaten in the opening round of the -57kg category at the European Games on Thursday as the Brits struggled for form in Baku.
The 22-year-old's tournament was ended early when she lost to Irina Zabludina of Russia.
The European Games in Azerbaijan are doubling up as judo's European Championships this year, while ranking points for the Olympics in Rio are also on offer.
Sports Mole spoke with the youngster afterwards to get her take on the action and the competition as a whole.
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Hi Nekoda, what are your thoughts after that? I'm guessing you must be gutted to have lost so early...
"Yeah, just because with judo it's difficult. You can be so close sometimes. Sometimes it can be in your favour and today it wasn't. There were a few things that I could have disputed, but it was going to be difficult for me to win the match on penalties. I had to throw back, so in the last 20 seconds I thought that I had to go for it and I ended up getting countered. It didn't work out for me. I'm not going to regret it. It was the right decision to make in the last 20 seconds of the match.
"After that it got a bit... I'm not sure if the referees knew what was going on. The time had finished and the match had moved on, but it wasn't finished because it got scored down, so I still had 13 seconds left to try to make something of the match, but by that point the scoreboard had gone. It just all felt a bit unorganised. Obviously I knew I'd lost, but it didn't feel finished.
"There's nothing you can do. Once it's finished, you come off and that's it. I'm just going to look forward to the future really. I've only been on the senior circuit for two years now. I'm pretty young in terms of experience, but at the same time I wanted to come here and make my mark and see how well I could do. You've just got to take it on the chin and move onto the next event because this is only one event in the two-year qualification period [for Rio], so although it's a major, it's not the be all and end all."
With the European Games also acting as judo's European Championships this year, did that change the way you approached the tournament?
"Not really. I've done multi-sport events before, so I just treated it the same as that. Although this is a massive deal, we just all treated it as if it was our regular European Championships. You don't get any extra points here, so it's kind of exactly the same. You just have to focus on that and not focus on everything else like the stadium, the raised platform, the fact that it is a massive event. I don't feel like it affected me. I felt focused, like I had the right gameplan, but like I said, sometimes it doesn't work your way."
With this tournament now done and dusted, what are you plans for the remainder of the year?
"I now have a recovery week and then we have the British Open at Wembley, which is a smaller event in comparison to this, and then I've got the Russian Grand Prix. That's another big event. You can get more points for winning that event than you do in this event, so it's a big deal trying to get a result there. That could do wonders for your points for the Olympic Games. That'll be my next focus - trying to get a result in Russia."
