Montréal, November 9, 2025 – Canadians Zachary Mainville and Thomas Warolin captured a bronze medal in Junior Nage-no-kata at the Kata World Championships in Paris this week.
The Canadian champions delivered an impressive performance on Saturday to claim third place on the podium and secure the Canada’s only medal at these world championships.
“We felt very well supported by the senior members of Judo Quebec and Judo Canada. Also, both our fathers have been very supportive, and they really motivated us,” said Warolin, who, like his partner, has been practicing judo for twelve years and kata for two.
“We won a tournament in Madrid a month ago, which gave us a boost as we headed to Paris. Coming into the world championships, we were ranked thirteenth in the world, but we nevertheless had high hopes.”
After finishing second in their group in the preliminary rounds and fifth overall, they took it up a notch in the final, racking up 375.5 points.
“In the first round, we didn’t perform at our best. But we were so determined to prove ourselves that we pulled it together for the finals, where we gave our best performance,” added Warolin. “We’re super happy to have made it onto the podium alongside people who have been practicing kata for a long time.”
The finals were very tight. South Koreans Junyoung Park and Jihoon Jung clinched the gold medal with 389.5 points, followed by Iranians Ali and Mohammadmahdi Sadeghiyan, who secured silver with 375.5 points—the same score as the Canadians.
“The fact that we had the same score as the silver medallists is a bit hard to take, but still, this medal is more than we had hoped for.”
In the same event, Isack Berger and Jean-Sébastien Roy were halted in the qualification rounds, finishing fourth in their group with 357.0 points.
Shane Rooney and Xiao Kang Hu also advanced to one of the finals in the French capital. However, they finished just shy of the podium in Katame-no-kata after earning a score of 407.0 in the final, only eight points behind bronze medallists Nicolas and Jean-Philippe Gilon of Belgium.
Also in Katame-no-kata, Kelly Palmer and Wesley Enns, who captured three gold medals at the Canadian Open Championships in May, finished fifth in their preliminary group with 379.5 points, as did Ludovic Durrieu and Eric De Rome, with 362.5.
While Rooney and Hu qualified for the finals in Katame-no-kata, they did not do so in Kime-no-kata. The pair finished fourth in their group with 472.0 points, behind Shane Legros and Dan Rusu, who accumulated 486.0. Mario Pageau and Rémi Grenon-Turcotte finished seventh in their pool with 465.0 points.
Legros and Rusu also competed in Ju-no-kata, finishing 11th in their group with 349.5 points. In the same discipline, Simon Gauthier-Hansen and Juliette Mireault were eliminated in the preliminary rounds, finishing ninth in Group 2 with 353.5 points.
In Nage-no-kata, Vladimir and Ivan Chitov finished eighth in their group with a score of 360.0.
Lastly, two pairs competed in Goshin Jutsu at the Paris World Championships. Edward Zupancic and Daniel Bird (468.0) finished seventh in their group and did not advance to the finals. Neither did Ivan Fournier and Pierre Pelletier, who placed tenth in their group with 457.0 points.
Zupancic and Bird also competed in Itsutsu Kata, where they finished fourth in their group (137.0). John Mallory and Michael Melvin did the same with 151.5 points, while Kelly Palmer and Wesley Enns took fifth place (149.5).
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Written by Sportcom for Judo Canada
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