FILIPINO-JAPANESE Junna Tsukii is locked in on the Olympic Karate qualification tournament, hoping to join the eight other qualifiers so far in the Tokyo Olympics.
Tsukii, as well as her national teammates, have two chances of advancing to the Olympics—the first is to make the podium in Paris or to emerge Asia’s No. 1 after the same Paris qualifiers that are set from June 11 to 13.
“It’s not impossible for me to go to the Olympics or win a gold medal,” Tsukii, 29, told BusinessMirror. “I’m not afraid of anything. I will fight without giving up until the end for the Philippines.”
Tsukii, who won the 50-kg gold medal at the Premier League in Lisbon eight days ago, is currently ranked No. 3 in Asia with 3742 points behind Iran’s Sara Bahmanyar (5677.50) and China Ranran Li (4950).
She is currently holding a training camp in Serbia but will fly to Istanbul soon to join the other Filipino hopefuls Jamie Lim (women’s 68 kgs), Joanne Orbon (61 kgs), Ivan Agustin (-75 kgs), Sharief Afif (+75 kgs), Jason Macaalay (-67 kgs) and Alwyn Batican (-67 kgs).
“I will join the team before the Paris tournament, but Turkey has a higher risk of infection than Serbia, so I will have to stay a little more here [Serbia],” she said.
She thanked the Serbian community for providing her intense and competitive training at the height of the pandemic.
“The training camp in Serbia has strong players coming from all over the world. I’m learning a lot by portsing with different types of players,” she said. “If I stayed in Japan, I’ll be training only with Japanese.”