Three years ago Euan Burton suffered the disappointment of missing out on a place in the British team at the Athens Olympics in Judo’s equivalent of a penalty shoot out. This time round he’s determined to make it to Beijing, where he is set to be a genuine contender to win a medal.

Although he is not complacent about his chances of making it, Burton is practically assured a place in the team for China after a successful twelve months that have seen him pick up a bronze medal at the European Championships and make history becoming the first British man to win a Super World Cup title in Moscow in May.

“It’s taken a bit of pressure off because there are other people on the team who are nowhere on the ranking list who have to do it at the Worlds, or if they don’t do it then at every tournament after that the pressure’s going to be ramped up.

“I know what that’s like because I did that the last time around. I finished tenth on the European ranking list the last time and missed out. The last qualification event that year was the European Championships and I lost the bronze medal fight in golden score, which meant I didn’t win a medal. That would have been my first European Championship medal.

“I finished tenth on the European ranking list when I would have been eighth if I’d won a medal. When Athens came around I just went to Japan for six weeks and tried to ignore it.”

But the 28-year-old Scot has bounced back and believes that the whole experience has been key to his recent success.

“You either get hung up on it and then it becomes your whole life, or you just pick yourself up and use that to motivate yourself a bit more.

“I’ve got that experience to draw on. If you do badly and you have a season where you’re not doing very well, you know that you can come back and pick yourself up again. At the time it was devastating, but when I think back, I wasn’t really ready.

“It would have been nice to have got the experience then because this time round I feel like I can medal.”

He is justified in feeling confident as he heads the European ranking lists in the –81kg category, and is tipped for a medal going into the last major championships before the games, the World Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“Nine places in each weight category is so few when you’re looking at the whole of Europe. But it does mean that if you qualify for the Olympic Games then you’re in with a real chance of a medal.”

One of the keys to his confidence is the consistency of his performances over the past twelve months.

“It’s reassuring as it’s something that hasn’t come before. A lot of the top judo players have been to Junior World Championships four or five times and done really well as a cadet. I didn’t even make the British cadet team and I only made the junior team on the last year that I was a junior.

“My first senior competition for Great Britain I got a fifth place at an A tournament but the next season I didn’t get anything.”

Further confirmation that he has found his form came in August at the German Open where, fighting out of his weight class, in the –90kg event, he finished fifth.

“After doing well at the Europeans and then winning Moscow I knew that the big guys from outside Europe would be watching me because I’m at the top of the European ranking list. I just didn’t want to give those guys another chance to fight against me.

“I thought if I go at -81kg I either want to win the tournament or I don’t want to fight at all because if you have a bad tournament then it gets in your head. At 90kg I could just go there for matches as it’s a confidence-booster beating guys who are heavier and stronger. But if I don’t win it’s not that difficult to cope with.”

It was a move sent tongues wagging in the judo world but the reasoning behind it was very simple.

“When people move up and down weight everyone’s asking ‘are you too heavy for the weight category’ or asking if you’re thinking about moving up permanently.  But we’d been out in Japan training for three weeks and we didn’t have any access to any good scales so I didn’t know exactly what weight I was.”

Burton lives in Edinburgh, his training base, with two other judo players and is part of the Edinburgh Judo Club set up that has produced five members of this year’s British World Championship team under the guidance of coach Billy Cusack.

“I wouldn’t want to train anywhere else. We’re really lucky with the players we’ve got here because, as well as being good players, they’re hard workers. There’s a kind of work ethic that’s been passed down through that club and we don’t have anyone that’s a real slacker that brings the group down.”

And Burton, who took guidance from previous Scottish champions like Graeme Randall and David Somerville as he came through the ranks, is helping to pass on that ethic to the young athletes coming through at the club.

“We need training partners because you need someone to throw, you need someone to work on technique with and a lot of the time you use younger guys as training partners. It’s good for them because they’re training with someone who’s technically a bit further down the line than them and who’s had experience of all the things they’re going to be going through. It’s good for them as well as us.”

But even at home there’s little escape from the rigours of life as a full-time athlete.

“There’s lots of judo kits to wash and dry it’s a nightmare. In the middle of winter it’s ridiculous. Judo kits are big and thick and when they’re wet they weigh an absolute ton. I broke so many of my mum’s washing machines when I was a kid she made me wash all of my kit at the launderette for a while.

“I do love the sport so I think I’m a pretty well balanced person, and if judo’s getting too much then I’m good at being able to understand that it’s really important to me now, but the more I stress about it the worse it’s going to get. Edinburgh’s a great city as well and it’s easy to get away from things because there’s always something to do.”

And the washing machine isn’t going to be getting a break any time soon as Burton is keen to carry on to compete in London in 2012.

“I’ll be 33 and I’ll be getting towards the top end of the age range for a judo player but I love practicing and I love being on the mat so if I can it would be fantastic to fight in a Games at home.”

AW

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