“It was a once in a lifetime experience, I cannot begin to describe the feeling.”
So said Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Larisa Cerić after lighting the Flame of Peace to open last year’s outstanding Winter European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) in Sarajevo and East Sarajevo.
It says a lot about Cerić and her standing in her home country that she – a judoka competing in a summer sport – was chosen for the honour at a Winter event. She is the pride and joy of BiH and one of its best hopes of bringing home a medal at next year’s Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has yet to produce a podium-finish at the Olympic Games since it started competing as an independent nation in 1992. So with Cerić provisionally qualified* for Tokyo (her second Games after Rio 2016) and consistently ranked as one of the top female judokas in the world in the +78 kg category, it is clear that expectations are high for the 29 year old.
Not that she’s overly concerned: Cerić has been a trailblazer for her country all her life.
“Last year at Minsk 2019 I won a silver medal and it was the first medal for BiH at the European Games, so I am very proud of my result and for my coach, because he prepared me so well that day, my shape was so good,” she says. “I think this experience will help me next year at the Olympic Games.”
Things are certainly pointing in the right direction. Following a long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cerić bounced back strong at her latest competition, the Dubrovnik Senior European Cup 2020 on 3 October, where she finished second.
It was an impressive result considering that for many months due to social-distancing restrictions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she wasn’t even allowed to practice her sport.
“I wasn’t able to do judo, but I would ride my bicycle and would go to a home gym and do weightlifting,” she says about her efforts to stay fit earlier this year. “Around Sarajevo we have a lot of mountains and every morning I would cycle around them, but it wasn’t nearly as good as judo.”
In addition to winning the first European Games medal for her country, Cerić also became the first athlete from BiH to top the IJF World Ranking List, which she accomplished in 2018.
Now her sights are firmly set on achieving another first for her country at next year’s Olympic Games. Although rather than look too far ahead, Cerić says she’s learned from the pandemic to live more in the present.
“One moment you have a normal life and the other moment everything is stopped,” she says. “So I think that we don’t need to look so far into the future. We need to live day by day and I think that is the main lesson that I learned, that I have to live day by day.”
The next step for Cerić is to be fully fit for this week’s Grand Slam Hungary 2020 on 23 October. After that, Cerić will take it one step at a time all the way to Tokyo 2020.
“After so many months without judo it was hard to get back in shape,” Cerić concludes. “But I hope that I will find some good motivation and I will be ready for the Olympic Games next year.”
* Due to the postponement of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 by a year, the International Judo Federation (IJF) has revisited their qualification process. The IJF’s current list is provisional and “only shows which judoka would be qualified if the Olympic Games were today. The list will likely change significantly until 28 June 2021, which is the deadline for obtaining points for Olympic qualification.”
