Kimberley Renicks does not need sartorial elegance to show she is cut from the same cloth as an Olympic champion.

The 21 year-old came of age at the German Open in Sindelfingen at the end of last month, when she beat Romanian Alina Dumitru, who won the Olympic gold medal in Beijing, in her opening bout in the Under-48kgs class.

It was enough to win her a place in the British team for the World Championships in Rotterdam this month – along with fellow Scots Sarah Clark and Euan Burton – and the Coatbridge player will not be out of her depth.

She dropped down from Under-52kgs to Under-48kgs last year – avoiding the potential of competing against her older sister Louise, 27, in the build up to 2012 in London and 2014 in Glasgow.

Renicks junior went on to win a silver medal at the German Open and revealed she achieved it in borrowed clothes.

“I was fortunate that I had my jacket as I had kept that in hand luggage but the rest of my kit was lost on the flight to Germany,” she explains.

“I arrived on the Friday, fought on the Saturday and my kit did not arrive until the Monday so I had to go into competition with borrowed kit.

“I was really nervous before I faced the Romanian but I had an early lead which I had to hold onto as the match went for the full five minutes.

“I had to be strong mentally against the Olympic champion but it is something I have been working on in recent months.

“The mental side of the sport is very important and I’m just learning that side of it. You have to focus on yourself going into a match but, more and more, you have to be aware of what your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses are.

“Then again, if you focus too much on your opponent then you can fall into the trap of not concentrating on your own strengths.”

It is a balance Renicks is developing with every bout and, having been on a judo mat from the age of four and competed as an eight year-old, she has almost been born into the sport.

Her father Thomas ran the local club and as she watched Louise progress, Kimberly quick to follow in her footsteps.

As they grew older, it was inevitable they would run into each other in Scottish and British competitions and Kimberley is happy not they are not in the same weight category.

“We met about five or six times at different competitions and I didn’t manage to win a single match against her,” she laughs.

“It would be great if we could both make the British team at the Olympics in 2012 and then go on to represent Scotland together at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow two years later.

“Louise is just coming back after an ACL injury and hopefully it will not be too long before she is competing again.”

Kimberley, who is studying for an HND in Sports Coaching and Development in Glasgow, believes new GB coach Patrick Roux has helped her step up a level.

“His style is a lot different from mine so it has helped me develop that side a lot which means I can handle different styles of opponent better,” she continues.

“I’ve been part of the Great Britain squad for a few years now and, while I get travel and accommodation for events I take part in, it is still difficult finding personal funding.

“I still live at home and my mum and dad help out with my expenses but it’s not a high-profile sport in the media, so there is not a lot of money around, especially when you are a student.”

Her daily training regime means getting up at 7.30am to travel to Ratho for a two-hour session, with conditioning and weights work afterwards, before she heads back west. She also has two-and-a-half hour sessions every Tuesday and Thursday.

But it is all starting to pay off. There was disappointment at the recent European Championships in Georgia when she lost her first fight against the German number one but that was her first major competition at her new weight.

The potential came through in Sindelgingen where, not only did she beat the Olympic champion, but also put out Belgian Elena Galkina and Russian Natalia Samoylova on the way to the final.

German Wasilisa Prill proved too strong in the final but Renicks has shown she is on target to shine at the Olympics in three year’s time.

RM
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