By KENNETH STEPHEN
IF OBSERVERS were asked to imagine the sort of place where Olympians are put through their paces, a ramshackle church hall would be unlikely to gain any votes. The Edinburgh Club's judo home may be crumbling, but their story is one of solid achievement against the odds, and the British Olympic selectors for Beijing might have reason to pay tribute to this aged facility when counting medal winners come 2008.
Last weekend the Edinburgh Club were crowned best of British. Even without injured world No.3 Euan Burton and 2006 European champion Sarah Clark, they gained ten medals in the UK championships, including golds for James Millar, Iain Feenan, Sally Conway and Sarah Adlington.
The haul was the greatest of any British club, and confirmed that, though they may lack access to working showers and other facilities which many take for granted, Edinburgh reflect something special.
"A few of the fighters are in contention for the Olympics next year; some are only one good competition away from qualifying," says Burton, whose place at Beijing is assured thanks to a recent bronze in the world championships.
"Last weekend was fantastic for the club, but the key thing is we are never happy with that. At this club, it is instilled into us from the coaches that, as soon as you hit a level, that level no longer exists. You move on."
For elite performance coach Billy Cusack, fighters are not measured by surroundings, but by their heart, their inner strength, work ethic and ability to take responsibility for others. He has groomed a Scottish world champion in Graeme Randall.
Cusack, a Glaswegian who competed at the Barcelona Olympics, declares: "We are building human beings. We treat everyone with respect. We do not make distinctions based on how many medals people have. That is the same as judging someone by how much money they have, or the car they drive. This is about what sort of people they are."
The judo dojo in Lorne Street goes like a fair and hundreds of children are coached within its four walls, which were painted by the fighters themselves.
Burton, who rates Cusack and fellow coach David Somerville as the best in the UK, reflects: "You can have all the fancy stuff in the world, but if you are not going to do the work, you'll get nowhere. At the Edinburgh Club every fighter is well conditioned, and knows how to conduct themselves on and off the mat.
"That is why people from England come here. If they walked into the dojo, they might think there is nothing flashy or special, but it is about the quality of the people that makes it."
Fighters such as Burton and Clark have attended various training camps and are constantly exposed to new ideas and methodologies, but they appreciate that a distinctive glue has hardened the resolve of practitioners at Lorne Street.
Recently the full-time athletes cleared rubbish, including bulky storage heaters, from a side-room of their premises and within two days they had tipped the junk into a skip and installed a makeshift gym equipped with surplus weights borrowed from friends and items collected from British Judo in England.
The idea at the Edinburgh Club is that, when everyone struggles through the same way, everyone appreciates the struggle. There is a common bond which tr anslates into creating would-be world beaters.
Coach Cusack has paid the landlords from his own pocket at times, and after being shifted from their previous home, club members trained wherever they could find space.
"From a judo point of view, we were actually quite chuffed with Lorne Street," says Burton, who is a serious contender for Olympic gold in Beijing. "There was an interim period where we trained in a really small space in the back room of a building that was about to be turned into flats. Some of the places we used were actually quite dangerous, so we were delighted to have a proper place to train."
The rundown building off Leith Walk is an unlikely setting to prepare for Olympic glory, but the Edinburgh Club are dedicated to the task of producing judo exponents of the highest quality.
Maybe someone above the old church hall is watching over the proceedings ...
The full article contains 722 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper. Last Updated: 08 December 2007 8:24 PM