Budapest, 2023, Karate World Championship. In such competitions, the emotions of the winners and losers are always evident. If you have a connection or sympathy with a competing athlete, your emotions are concentrated on him, and in the end, you also experience one of those emotions. But, when you are standing in a neutral position you see every emotion. It’s so touching to see how a second splits one from happiness and sadness, from pain and pleasure.

There were several moments in this competition that I particularly remembered. One of them was to see the scream and the cry from the happiness in the same frame after the Turkish female karateka won the fight. Another one – the Saudi Arabian athlete leaving the fight with bandages on his forehead, face, and fingers. In one of the scenes was a cultural ritual, which I didn’t expect to witness – the Indonesian athlete taking the coach’s hand to her face for good luck; as well as, to see, the Tunisian athlete praying with his hands open without removing his gloves, before the fight.

An athlete’s achievement is only due to the result of that particular competition. The winning athlete receives a prize for that fight. And the defeated… If he enters the fight again, maybe he will be the winner next time. The battle is fought only once, so we never know how it could be otherwise. However, a unique situation occurred in this championship – one of the results was partially invalidated due to the referee’s error in the fight that ended earlier. Thus, those two karatekas had to repeat the fight with their existing points from a certain part of the battle. The Turkish athlete who won the prior fight, this time loses by a small margin. A few minutes ago, she was among those who were feeling the happiest, and in a moment she dives into a deep sadness.

Photo/Text: Nurlan Tahirli