Shady El Nahas | After depression, revenge

Some athletes see defeat as a necessary passage. Others, as a mistake along the way. For Shady El Nahas, defeat is brutal and violent. So much so that the setback suffered during his last fight at the Tokyo Olympics led him to go through a depression from which he cured himself by reminding himself daily that perfection does not exist.

On July 29, 2021, the Quebec judoka was lying on his back, motionless, on the tatami mat of the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo. El Nahas had just lost his bronze medal match because of a victorious waza-ari from his opponent Jorge Fonseca. The Olympic rookie, buoyed by legitimate chances of a medal, had a hard time getting back up afterwards, literally and figuratively.

“I thought, ‘Nothing in my life could get worse than that,'” he recalls three years later.

Repetitive rib and knee injuries “every two weeks” have also contributed to the 26-year-old’s darkness. “I have pictures, I’ll show you, it’s disgusting,” he adds, as if he needs proof to justify how tumultuous the last 24 months have been.

Looking back, he explains this mishap by the way he approached his most important fights.

His desire to win even translated into an obsession with perfection. In his preparation, his fights and his performance. However, he realized that if he had never yet touched said perfection, it was because this finality defined by an idyllic irreproachability was probably only an illusion to which he had to stop clinging in order to move forward.

“I want everything to be perfect, but I know it’s not normal.” Now, the flamboyant but very humble judoka plans to change the narrative of his own story. “It’s like a movie. There’s always an incident that changes everything. But at some point, there’s a trigger that makes the star of the movie rebuild himself. And I’m in that right now, in my own movie.”

So, when we met El Nahas in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges district, it was a bit like sitting down in a log cabin in the depths of a Russian winter to chat with Rocky Balboa in the midst of preparing for his fight against Ivan Drago.

The return

In this trying but exhilarating attempt to get back on track, the young man of Egyptian origin still managed to grab a medal along the way. A reward that propelled him even closer to his goal.

At the most recent World Championships, held in Abu Dhabi in May, El Nahas won the silver medal in the under 100kg category.

With this award, he also secured his place on the Canadian Olympic team for the second time in his career.

Long before he imagined himself in Paris with Lululemon’s red and white Olympic kit, El Nahas had these Worlds in his sights. “The pressure, for me, was at the Worlds. The stress was in the semi-finals. I got it out and now I can focus on the Games and I’m more relaxed,” he says, leaning back in his chair, as if in relief.

“The Worlds were just to qualify for the Games. I handled it like any other tournament. It’s a stress release, because I really wanted to go to the Games.”

In April, he also won the gold medal at the Pan American-Oceanian Championships. And in March, he reached the grand prix final twice. “Two years ago, or even one year ago, I was not performing well, I was injured all the time, but now it’s really better.”

In fact, he reacted as his instincts dictated. All his life, he had to adapt. Until the age of 12, he studied in a French high school in Egypt. His family then moved to Toronto. He stayed there for six years before landing in Montreal. However, it is on a tatami that he truly feels at home.

The Man to Beat

In the World Championship final, El Nahas lost to Azerbaijani Zelym Kotsoiev. The reigning European champion moved from fifth to first place in the world rankings with this triumph.

The two judokas had faced each other in the round of 16 at the Tokyo Games and the Canadian had won. “But since then, Kotsoiev has taken several steps forward,” he admits.

And according to the table unveiled for the Paris Games, to win gold, El Nahas will probably have to beat Kotsoiev, because if the two attackers face each other, it will be in the final.

“I think he showed me all his cards and now I can study that and work with Antoine [Valois-Fortier] to avoid another defeat. […] But now, if we play another match, the duel will be different.”

We will only know on the 1st^er August whether either of them will be able to savor an Olympic title. In the meantime, it is impossible to predict with what kind of feelings El Nahas will leave Paris. The main thing, for the moment, is to control the way in which he goes there. “It is a fact, I am now one of the best in the world. It is fun to be able to believe in yourself.”