Judo star Dylan Munro hails coach Billy Cusack ahead of Budapest test

Edinburgh Judo Club star Dylan Munro has hailed the influence of his coach, Billy Cusack, ahead of the biggest competition of his young career so far.

Dylan Munro, coached by Billy Cusack at Edinburgh Judo Club, is in top form heading into this weekend's Under-23 European Championships in Budapest

The 21-year-old from Corstorphine flies to Budapest today for this weekend's Under-23 European Championship in the form of his life after finishing on the podium at events in Croatia and Malaga last month.

He puts his improvement down to time spent with Cusack, who was inducted into JudoScotland’s inaugural Hall of Fame last weekend.

Cusack competed at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and then coached Edinburgh player Sally Conway to the first Olympic judo medal produced by a Scottish athlete.

He has coached Munro since he was five and his influence has been evident in recent weeks.

“Billy is tremendous,” said Munro. “He’s got so much knowledge. Every time you go to training you learn something new. He’s always got something different to offer at every session.

“It’s time. Nothing comes straight away. I’ve been training full-time since I was 17. I’m 21 now.

“It takes time to get results, and perhaps Covid delayed things a bit, but I think that’s what happened. It’s all been coming together this year and my recent form has been really good.”

Munro will test himself against some top-level players in the -60kg category in the Hungarian capital.

He hopes it will eventually lead to the 2024 Paris Olympics, but his immediate priority is to cement a place in the Scotland team for next summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

“That’s the main aim at the moment,” he added. “We’ll see how that goes and then hopefully the Olympics will come afterwards.”