🇨🇦 Anes Mati

A note on the name, because the sources do not agree. The International Judo Federation lists him in surname-first convention as MATI Anes, and Judo Canada's own headline reads Anes Mati; the IJF's article text renders it Mati Anes throughout. This profile uses Anes Mati, the form the national federation uses, and records the disagreement rather than quietly choosing a side.

The 66 kg men's category is the deepest in cadet judo, because it is the weight most athletes pass through before they grow. Draws there are crowded with fighters who will be 73 kg competitors in two years, which makes the category unusually unforgiving: the standard is high and the field turns over annually, so a result one year predicts very little about the next. That is the context for a fifth place in 2025 turning into a title in 2026 rather than a steady climb.

He was born in Algeria and moved to Canada in 2011. He first stepped onto the mats aged four, at Club Torii in Montreal, taken there by his father — a former national-level boxer — largely to give a restless child somewhere to put his energy. By his own account he did not enjoy it. “At the beginning, I didn't want to do judo; I didn't like it. I was a child and getting thrown was not my thing,” he told the IJF. “But at a certain point, when I started winning, I felt better and better. When I was a teenager around 13 or 14, I felt like judo was a part of me, like if I stopped, it wouldn't make me the same person.”

His signature technique is kata-guruma — the shoulder wheel — which he took from watching the Italian senior Manuel Lombardo. “It's such a good technique because you can do it from every angle,” he said. “When you do it, you feel like the person is following you and you just know that the guy is going to fall.” Preparation in Guayaquil was opponent-by-opponent, worked through with a coaching group that included the Japanese technical specialist Rain Suzuki, the strategist Vladimir Semirozum and his former coach Nikita Trenov: “With my coach, we were watching everyone's fight. For every one of them I was preparing a certain way to beat them.”

The final was against Giorgi Kapanadze of Georgia. Mati scored two yukos and then closed the contest down, giving Kapanadze nothing to work with in the closing minutes. The Canadian coach Antoine Bouchard called it the cleanest bout of the day: “The final match was the one he handled best, and where he was in the least danger. He was able to score points and then minimized any threats or risk from his opponent's throws. Anes was in control from start to finish — it was a great bout.” Winning a world final on accumulated small scores rather than a single throw is a specific kind of judo, and it is the harder one to execute under pressure.

Two things should be said plainly. This is an under-18 title, not a senior one, and the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar and the world junior championships in Uzbekistan — both of which he has named as next targets — are the tests that will show whether it carries. And the emotional arc, fifth to first, is a real one but it is also the most common arc in age-group sport; what is less common is doing it having lost months to injury on the way. “All the stress just disappears,” he said, “because you know now that everything you did, all those sacrifices, all that crying on the mats, was worth something.”