Australia may have unearthed another future judo star after Canberra teenager Connor Smith won a silver medal at the Youth Commonwealth Games in the Bahamas this week.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Marist student clinched the judo -90 kilogram silver medal less than two weeks after helping the ACT schoolboys win their first national rugby championship in 29 years.
The gold medal went the way of England's Thomas Lish but not before Smith wrote another chapter in the esteemed Hill family's record books, one representing a seemingly endless production line of judo champions.
His mother Narelle Smith went to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics for judo, won bronze at the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games and claimed five national titles.
She has three brothers and two sisters that have also won Australian championships, with brothers Tom - who won gold at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games - and Steven now in charge of their own judo gym, the Hill Sports Academy in Belconnen.
The Hill Sports Academy is notorious for producing champions, with former national champion and Commonwealth Games representative Duke Didier cutting his teeth in the same system.
Seventeen-year-old Smith's rugby genes come from his father Andrew, who spent plenty of years playing for Royals in the John I Dent Cup.
Smith's effort continued an impressive haul for the Australians after Tim Hollingberry won the gold medal in the +90kg category.
Sydney's Uros Nikolic (-73kg) and Queenslander Francis Newman (-70kg) also won silver, taking the Australian judokas medal tally to four.
