Gabriel­la Wood has been grind­ing it out around the world over the past few years, lead­ing up to the Olympic Games.

So when the lo­cal ju­do­ka, who is based in Scot­land, got the news on Tues­day that she had qual­i­fied for the de­layed Tokyo Olympic Games, her first re­ac­tion was: "This is crazy, crazy!"

The qual­i­fi­ca­tion pe­ri­od was ini­tial­ly planned to end in June 2020, but due to the on­go­ing coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic forc­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) to post­pone the Games, it was ex­tend­ed to June 2021, end­ing af­ter the World Ju­do Cham­pi­onships in Hun­gary, last month. There, the 23-year-old Wood lost in her first fight dur­ing the sec­ond round against the world 38th ranked Anzhela Gas­par­i­an of Rus­sia.

This fol­lowed, Wood's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the World Ju­do Tour which most re­cent­ly in­clud­ed com­pe­ti­tions at the Tbil­isi Grand Slam in Geor­gia in March and at the An­talya Grand Slam in Turkey in April.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Ju­do Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) cal­cu­lat­ed all the points won by the par­tic­i­pants of the World Tour and an­nounced the list of ath­letes which in­clud­ed the 72nd-ranked in her weight cat­e­go­ry (+78Kgs) Wood, who qual­i­fied via the Pan Amer­i­can Con­ti­nen­tal Quo­ta.

"It feels great be­cause even with the pan­dem­ic and the un­cer­tain­ty of be­ing able to trav­el to com­pe­ti­tions, my coach still had me on the mat and work­ing as of­ten as he could and that re­al­ly kept me up to stan­dard," said Wood re­fer­ring to coach Lee Calder.

"With­out that prob­a­bly would have been a dif­fer­ent sto­ry but it feels so good de­spite every­thing that has hap­pened over the last year and a half to fi­nal­ly qual­i­fy."

Like the rest of T&T, Wood, who first rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Open in Pana­ma in 2015, was thrilled to learn that she will be the first women's ath­lete to rep­re­sent this coun­try in the sport and sec­ond na­tion­al ath­lete over­all. The first was Christo­pher George at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games in Brazil.

"My hope now is that peo­ple, not just the fe­males but peo­ple of T&T and peo­ple of the Caribbean as well, can see that if you re­al­ly put your heart and your mind to some­thing that you can achieve it. There is so much more to of­fer out­side of the Caribbean you just have to be will­ing to push those bound­aries and ex­plore it

"There is so much to gain and so much to learn you just have to push those bound­aries."

With the Tokyo Games less than a month away, Wood spent a lit­tle time to cel­e­brate the mo­ment but her day-to-day prepa­ra­tion will be­come more in­tense with train­ing part­ners un­der coach Calder, as the Games ap­proach­es.

"It's al­ways been fo­cused, fo­cused for me that's nev­er changed," said Wood, who will be sched­uled to com­pete on Ju­ly 28 in Tokyo.

While T&T will have one rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wood some Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees, in co­or­di­na­tion with the na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions, will now have to choose their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in cas­es where sev­er­al ath­letes from the same na­tion are in­side the qual­i­fi­ca­tion quo­ta.

For three years ath­letes from the five con­ti­nents, rep­re­sent­ing 110 na­tions, in­clud­ing Japan as the host na­tion, have com­pet­ed to earn the right to com­pete on the Olympic stage.