IT comes as something of a surprise to hear Sally Conway say she thinks this is the first European Championships in which she has gone into really believing she can come away with some silverware.

It is only over the last couple of years that Scotland’s top judoka has developed a really strong self-belief but the benefits are clear to see.

Having won an Olympic bronze medal in Rio in 2016 - Scotland’s first-ever Olympic medal in judo - Conway took a year out of the sport. But since returning to competition, she has gone from strength to strength, including putting in one of the best results of her career at the Paris Grand Slam in February, which she won, defeating world champion and world number one Chizuru Arai from Japan in the final.

Conway followed up that gold medal with a third-place finish in the Antalya Grand Prix in Turkey earlier this month and it all bodes well for the European Championships, which began yesterday in Tel Aviv and in which Conway will fight in the -70kg category today.

The 31-year-old is the sixth seed in Tel Aviv but goes into the event confident that, on her day, she has the beating of everyone she will come up against.

“It’s a good feeling knowing that I have the ability to beat everyone out there,” she said.

“So far this year I’ve had two very good competitions so I feel like I’m in a good position. Every competition now, I go in with the self-belief that you need whereas before, I think I doubted myself too much. But I feel like those negative thoughts are on the sidelines for me now and I’m just focusing on myself and what I need to do to be able to beat each person.”

Conway’s Olympic medal in 2016 worked wonders for her confidence but she has also gained a certain maturity over the past couple of years and that has given her an ability to deal admirably with pressure. And while she admits that thoughts of winning a first European medal have crossed her mind, she is too experienced to let those thoughts linger too long.

“I do allow myself to think about winning a medal but while that thought does come into my mind, I’m also conscious that whenever it does, I need to reign it back in because if I think too far ahead and get carried away, my performances don’t happen as I’d like them to,” she said.

“So I’ll just take it slowly and concentrate on my first fight. If I can perform well in my first fight, that will set me up well for the rest of the day and I think that will give me the best chance of doing well.

“I think the Olympic medal gave me the confidence that I can do it but I also feel like I’ve adopted a more relaxed approach to competition and I’ve stopped seeing it as this massive thing. Now, I’m looking each major competition as a great opportunity to show that I can perform on the day whereas before, I think I got too nervous about what was going to happen.

“I don’t feel pressure from other people. I don’t feel like I read into things too much – I know that you can win an Olympic medal one day and then go to a competition the following day and lose your first fight. I’ve been in the sport so long so I know that you can’t ever get complacent and that it’s so unrealistic to think that you’ll win every fight. So I don’t feel like the pressure gets to me too much at all.”

Conway admits that since she has reached her thirties, there have been a few more people enquiring about how much longer she is thinking of continuing for. But with both her mind and body feeling better than ever, she is not entertaining any thoughts of retirement just yet.

“Physically I feel great - I feel the strongest I’ve ever felt,” she revealed.

“I think it’s everyone else that questions how much longer I can go on for much more than me. In my heart though, I don’t feel like I’m in my thirties and I don’t feel like I’m going to stop any time soon.

“I do find it hard to take rest sometimes and it can fell like I’m skiving but I’ve realised now that if I do give myself a rest when I’m on a training camp, the outcome is that I have a much better session the next day and that’s what’s best for me.

“It’s not really your actual age that’s important but more how your body feels that’s important. I feel good and I feel like I can still keep pushing.

“So I have adjusted my training to suit what I need and what’s best for me at this point of me career. I know that you need to get the perfect training programme for you and so if I can find that, it will help me keep going longer and hopefully keep performing well.”