Belgian Sofie de Saedelaere retires immediately aged 26

Belgian judoka Sofie De Saedelaere decided to end her career with immediate effect. The 26 year old triple Belgian champion was disappointed in the results at the last two World Cup events in Tunis and Sofia and took the "most difficult decision" of her life.

De Saedelaere won bronze World Cup medals in Casablanca and Rome in 2014 and in Santiago and Montevideo in March 2015. Between May 2014 and early 2015, she was injured and operated on her knee. She did participate in the European Games in Baku in June but was eliminated in her first fight.

In January this year De Saedelaere took the 7th place U78kg in Tunisia and was eliminated in the first round in Sofia last week. De Saedelaere fought career matches against athletes such as Abigel Joo, Anastasiya Dmitrieva, Luise Malzahn, Madeleine Malonga, Daria Pogorzelec, Natalie Powell, Laia Talarn, Yahima Ramirez and Guusje Steenhuis, to name a few. Current Belgian champion is Katrien Johnson.

"If you invest 500% in your sport and that it derives 50%, it is impossible to continue," said Sofie De Saedelaere ranked 45th worldwide in her weight class.

"In the second half of 2015, the results were already below expectations and the result was that I had to pay a part of the tournament fees. I understand the decision of the leaders who are bound by limited budgets and I think this may work for a number of motivated people. But for me, this made the thing a bit more complicated. Besides the training many hours, I began to have financial worries" said De Saedelaere against Belgian agency Belga.

Although she was scheduled to fight in Paris and Düsseldorf De Saedelaere will cancel her participation. "In my heart, I no longer believed. Also the chances of success were low in both of the toughest tournaments in this period. I leave the top-level sport with a broken heart, it gave me a lot of beautiful moments."