On day one of the Paris Olympic Games, hometown fans will give a heroes’ welcome to a group of athletes considered national celebrities.

No, they’re not cyclists, or footballers, but jūdōkas (Judo athletes), a sport more popular in France than anywhere else in the world.

France trails only Japan — where the martial art originates — when it comes to the most Olympic medals won in the sport.

But while participation numbers in Australia are tiny by comparison (at approximately 16,000), two women, Aoife Coughlan and Katharina Haecker, enter Paris 2024 as realistic medal hopes.

Haecker is ranked fifth in the world, and Coughlan tenth, in their respective weight divisions.

It’s an impressive feat for a nation that has won just two Olympic Judo medals, most recently when Maria Pekli won bronze at Sydney in 2000.

Pekli is now Judo Australia’s high performance manager, a position she has held for eight years, and says having two women ranked in the top 10 is a “significant” achievement.

“There are more men than female participants in Judo, but in Australia we traditionally have very strong female Judo athletes,” she says.

“We have a lot of confidence that the girls are ready. Statistically, we have done a lot of work analysing the performance of other medallists in other countries and they are very well placed to medal.”

Haecker and Coughlan are sparring partners and best friends, each confronting mental demons on the road to realising a lifelong dream.

The teddy bear and the wombat

Haecker, 31, was born in Germany and made the permanent move to Melbourne just two years ago.

The decision was prompted by the opening of the National Performance Centre in Albert Park, an Australian Institute of Sport funded-initiative which provides a home for Australia’s elite Judo and Taekwondo athletes.

It has meant Haecker can train full-time with 28-year-old Coughlan, a change both women say has significantly improved their craft.

“We really feed off each other’s energy and try to push each other to the next level,” Haecker says.

“Having a training partner in the top 10 in the world, who is just one weight division above or below you, it’s pretty outstanding; we’re pretty fortunate in that regard.

“Fighting someone day in and day out at that level, you improve. There’s no way around it.”

Coughlan agrees.

“Katharina is very hard to train with,” she laughs.

“She’s not as scary as you might think. On the mat, yes, but off the mat, she’s a teddy bear.

“Apart from my sister Maeve, she’s my best friend.”

Haecker is just as complimentary.

“Aoife’s just genuinely such a great person,” she says.

“Like, if someone needs help, she’ll be the first person there. She’s super kind, honest and just a great person overall. You love having her around.”

Asked to describe Coughlan on the mat, Haecker turns to another animal metaphor.

“I call her the wombat, because she’s just so stable,” she laughs.

“Annoying is another word for her. Like the wombat who runs in front of your car, and your car is broken afterwards.”

Judo is like “wrestling, but a bit fancier”: Coughlan

Judo is contested between two opponents (‘jūdōkas’), one dressed in a blue uniform, and one white.

There are multiple ways to win a Judo match, including throwing an opponent, immobilsing them and forcing them to ‘submit’ with a choke hold or arm/joint lock.

Asked to describe the sport for a general audience, Coughlan calls it “wrestling but a bit fancier”.

Haecker laughs, before agreeing.

“It’s very technical and physical as well,” Haecker adds.

“You need to be fit, you need to be strong, and your technical skill set has to be very good.

“Judo is kind of hard to describe, because there’s so many rules. 

“It’s basically wrestling with a suit on.”

Haecker was born to a German mother and Australian father, and grew up in Hamburg.

As a kid, her Mum called her an “outside angel”.

“I wasn’t an angel at home, but outside I behaved really well,” Haecker explains.

Sending Haecker to Judo was her parents’ way of getting her to burn some of her seemingly limitless energy.

“I loved it straight away,” she says.

“I loved that it was a combat sport, and that I got to fight boys.”

On a deeper level, Haecker was also attracted to Judo’s values.

Like many martial arts, Judo operates on a so-called moral code, or the ‘great eight’ values of courage, respect, modesty, friendship, honour, sincerity, self-control and politeness.

This includes the ritual of lining up to bow to opponents before training, and shaking hands after a contest.

“Judo has given me direction in life,” Haecker says.

“I have made so many friends worldwide that will probably last a lifetime, because we have a deeper connection, something in common. We may not speak the same language, but I feel quite close to them.”

The accidental Australian Olympian

Haecker never intended to represent Australia in Judo.

As a junior, she dreamed of representing Germany, emulating the feats of heroes like Yvonne Bönisch.

But when she failed to make the national team, she took some time away from the sport, travelling to Australia to pursue another childhood fantasy.

“Dad always told stories of his time in Australia, so it was a dream for me to come here,” she says.

At first, Haecker worked as an Au Pair in a Queensland mining town, before travelling around Western Australia, as well as the rest of the East Coast.

But while she was “happy” in Australia, the fire to be a competitive jūdōka remained.

Haecker’s coach Alex — who would later become her partner and husband — suggested she look into whether she could represent her adopted country.

“I’d never seen anyone from Australia compete in Judo, definitely not at the elite level.

“But in a few months, it became reality.”

After several conversations with Australian officials, Haecker was invited to pursue a national ranking.

The next thing she knew, they were talking about taking her to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

“It was just like a snowball effect,” she says.

“It was crazy.”

Ranked fifth in the world, but struggling with self-belief

Haecker’s dream of competing at the Olympics was realised at Rio in 2016, before she again represented Australia at Tokyo in 2021.

Both times she lost in the second round of competition, but has had a different build-up to Paris.

This time, she has sewn up a coveted ‘seeded’ position, meaning she will avoid other highly-ranked opponents in the opening round.

But despite a career-high ranking of fifth, Haecker admits to struggling with self-confidence:

“There are some people who as kids are just super talented and know how to move, and everything just comes to them.

“I’m just a really hard worker. I had to work for everything.”

It’s a confronting statement from an athlete at the peak of her powers, who acknowledges that self-belief is a “weakness”:

“It was my childhood dream to go to the Olympics, but I never made it to the German national team, so for me, I felt like I wasn’t good enough,” she says.

Judo in the Coughlan DNA

Coughlan’s journey to being an elite jūdōka is, on paper, more straightforward than Haecker’s.

Both her parents practised Judo; it was how they first met, at college in their home country of Ireland.

Coughlan’s parents fell in love with the sport, as well as each other.

After moving to Australia for work — to the country Victorian town of Traralgon, in Gippsland — they would go on to have four children, three of which have practised elite Judo.

Brother Eoin competed at the Rio Olympics, while Aoife’s younger sister Maeve is aiming to qualify for Los Angeles 2028.

But the road to success hasn’t necessarily been smooth for Coughlan.

She suffers from social anxiety, and at one stage took an extended break from the sport.

“I was bullied quite badly in primary school,” she says.

“So I’ve always been a little bit anxious around new people and situations. I’m also a big introvert, so I get very tired in social settings.”

Coughlan has since been working closely with coach Daniel Kelly on her anxiety.

Kelly is the partner of Pekli, and is himself a four-time Olympian, and nine-time Australian champion.

Together, they run the Resilience Training Centre in Footscray, where Coughlan is working in a customer-facing role in an attempt to face some of her fears.

“Daniel thought it would be a great way for me to come out of my shell a bit, and put me in an uncomfortable situation.

“It has kinda helped. It’s something I’ve worked on a lot, and it has gotten better as I’ve gotten older.”

On performance anxiety, and taking a break

One of the most challenging aspects of Judo, Coughlan says, is the mental side.

“It’s an individual sport, so it’s all on you,” she explains.

“If you don’t win, it’s because you’re not good enough. So you have to be mentally switched on and very prepared, very mentally strong.”

In 2014, after a long struggle with performance anxiety, Coughlan took the decision to take some time away from competing.

“I was not looking forward to tournaments at all,” she says.

Over six months, Coughlan was supported by Kelly, who assured her that she could come back if and when she wanted to.

She also delved into sports psychology, reading as much as she could.

One of the legacies of that time, and working with a psychologist, has been learning to better manage her anxiety.

“I’ve learned how to spot the triggers, and channel my anxiety in a more productive way,” she says.

“I think that has been critical, because if you’re not nervous about competing, do you actually love what you’re doing?”

Olympic medal hopes

With a short turnaround to Paris, both Coughlan and Haecker say they are in the best mental shape they have been.

Both Coughlan and Haecker endured a difficult time at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics.

Coughlan lost in the second round to an opponent she had beaten six weeks earlier, while Haecker required surgery on her knee to remove a cyst in the lead-up.

What was expected to be six week recovery ballooned to six months when surgeons realised she had sustained more damage than originally thought.

Having “barely made it” to Tokyo, she was bundled out in the round of 16, replicating her performance at Rio.

In 2024, however, Haecker says she is in a very different place.

“Now I 100 per cent feel like I can medal, and I feel the same about Aoife. So it’s super exciting to be going into the Olympic Games in that position.

“If it actually happens that I medal, it would be amazing. It’s so hard to put into words [what it would mean], because I’ve worked all my life for it… but to be on the podium representing Australia would be very special.”

Coughlan agrees, with an important caveat:

“My big goal is an Olympic medal, and I’m not fussy about the medal, it can be any colour,” she says.

“But performance wise, I just want to perform as well as I know I can. And if the medal doesn’t come, I’ll be disappointed [of course]. But as long as I’ve done myself justice, I’ll be satisfied enough.”

• The Paris Olympics judo competition starts tonight and carries on into Sunday morning. Follow all the action via ABC Sport’s nightly live blogs.