“I was born for gold, not born for bronze. I'm happy, I can say that. Unfortunately, I didn't accomplish my big goal of being an Olympic champion. I worked a lot for the gold, whatever it took. The cramp [in my hand] didn't help me in the semi-final, it ruined the fight. It was a mistake”, he analyzed, in the media zone at Nippon Budokan. Jorge Fonseca won bronze in the -100 kg category at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, beating Canadian Shady Elnahas by waza-ari, reaching the 25th medal for Portugal at the Olympic Games.

After two world titles, the first in the history of Portuguese judo, and a bronze medal in Europeans, the athlete, who had been 17th at Rio2016, secured his first Olympic medal, by scoring for waza-ari a my 39 seconds left. Earlier, he had lost in the semi-finals to Korean Cho Guham, after defeating Belgian Tomo Nikiforov and Russian Niiaz Iliasov to reach the 'seifs'.

“Cramps can happen”, he explained, "with the anxiety of wanting to achieve something" and when he feels "very nervous", and despite having already worked "with a psychologist", in the moment "you can't control it". To restart for the bronze dispute, the recipe was simple, he said. “My coach told me it was time to do something historic. We came to conquer, not to play”, he said.

“I'm in despair, I just made a mistake. At that moment, you can't control it, the emotion is so great. Every second is worth gold. I was afraid of losing, I already had two punishments, and I have a big war with that Spanish referee [Raúl Camacho], he already screwed up my life at the Masters”, he pointed out. To get here in the best physical condition, having “endurance and strength”. “I have judo, I'm explosive, I needed stamina to withstand all the fights,” he added.

In the rest of the interview, he mentioned the two world titles, in 2019 and 2021, as proof of his ambition to reach gold, but today "it didn't go well", now having to "raise his head" and fight to overcome himself again. Despite this, the results are an improvement from Rio2016's 17th place, when he was overcoming cancer and underwent “an accelerated treatment”, bringing him “great suffering”.


He had promised, in a good-natured way, that if he won, he would dance a 'pimba', but now he “does not feel like it”. “I wanted to dance the pimba, but with gold around my neck, it has a different grace. With bronze, we can dance a kizomba, but I don't want to dance a kizomba, I want to dance a pimba. I'm going to pimba in Paris2024”, he promised.

Portugal now has four gold medals, eight silver and 13 bronze, three of which in judo, by Telma Monteiro (-57 kg) in Rio2016, and Nuno Delgado (-81 kg) in Sydney2000, and now Jorge Fonseca in Tokyo.