For as long as anyone can remember, football and handball have been very popular with the boys in Senden. But when Lev Unterberg and his family moved from Russia to the Stever community in 2015 – the son was five at the time – he had long since lost his heart to the sport of judo. Mother Xenia remembers: “Two years, three at most” was the little one when Papa Satur took him into the hall for the first time. Since then, hardly a day has gone by without Lev training.
Corona? So what? Just a matter of organization. Xenia Unterberg still rolls her eyes today: “He and Satur laid out the living room with mats and converted it into a gym.” The mother thinks fundamentally that a family with three children can also use their living room differently during a lockdown. But then there’s that sound when one trickes the other: “Rum. rum. Every few minutes – please no second time.”
technique crucial
Now, one would assume that whenever it made “rums,” Satur – himself a black belt, a tiny head taller and several pounds heavier – taught the Filius a lesson. In fact, it was the son who finally defeated the father with a skilful turn – the boy’s specialty. “The right technique,” says Lev Unterberg, “is ultimately more important in judo than sheer strength.”
Satur Unterberg said nothing as he lay on the ground. Of course he will have been proud of his eldest at some point. But at that moment, the pain outweighed the pain. “I broke two of his ribs,” says the twelve-year-old, beaming from ear to ear.
Putting his opponents on the mat: Lev is quite adept at it. Unterberg junior has competed in 43 competitions – many at an international level – since 2019, and subsequently stood on the podium 37 times. The young man from the Stever community has celebrated three of his greatest victories to date this summer: two in the U14 and U16 classes (i.e. against consistently older competitors) at the Messestadt tournament in Dornbirn, Austria, and one in Luxembourg (U15), where he defeated his opponent in the final with an uchi mata, a particularly spectacular shoulder throw. “Pure adrenaline” is how Unterberg describes the action, precisely because he had only seldom succeeded in completing this highly complex move before.
Long-term goal of the Olympics
To prove it, he shows a cell phone video of the fight. Father Satur, who always looks after him at tournaments, crouches at the edge of the mat and is overjoyed. Mother Xenia also travels regularly: “Thanks to Lev we can get around quite a bit in Europe.” France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Estonia are the names of the family’s upcoming stops. But Unterberg’s long-term goal is different: Brisbane, Australia. The Summer Olympics will be held there in 2032. There he wants to emulate his great idol, Shōhei Ōno, who won gold in both Rio and Tokyo.
For this, Lev Unterberg practices twelve hours and more every week: with father Satur at Clever Fit in Send, at the state bases in Osnabrück and in Bottrop, at his club, the TSC Münster-Gievenbeck. Sooner or later, a change to the federal base in Cologne and the attached boarding school should be an issue for the junior high school student.
Xenia would like to delay moving out of the shared home a little. This bright adolescent, who is sitting on the sofa next to her, dreams of the Olympics and sends rows of opponents to the dust, “he’s still a child. My child.”
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