On the fourth and final day of the individual competition, there were some surprise exits and with a heavy European presence, a chance for major rematches following the Junior European Championships in Luxembourg.
Yael Van Heemst (NED) was, again in the final of a major tournament, determined to better her European result and take the gold. It just so happened that her opponent was Anna Monta Olek (GER), her downfall of the Junior European Championships. With a great rematch on our hands, it was highly anticipated.
Still feeding off her European success, she came in confident to the -78kg final and within the first half of the contest, executed a waza ari scoring uchi mata transitioning in to osae komi to collect her first world title.
It was a bit of a surprise that the senior world bronze medallist, Ilia Sulamanidze (GEO) didn’t make it to the final in Luxembourg, even though he was still on the podium. He struggled against the eventual champion, Matevy Kanikovsky (RUS) and once again the pair went head to head in a semi final. A fierce battle for grips was the main focus and it was such an equal contest that neither were able to score and so it became a shido result in favour of the Georgian.
He then went on to face Sukhrob Rajabov (UZB), the only non-European finallist of the whole tournament. In 2019, Sulamanidze took bronze in Marrakech so desperately wanted to make sure he would leave with gold this time. The initial score came in the final minute for the Georgian, a simple foot sweep gave him a waza ari and was the winning score.
The individual competition has now come to a close with Europe taking an extraordinary fifty medals in total but it isn’t over yet. Tomorrow we will see the exciting mixed teams event go ahead and Team France will be hoping they can mimic their European performance to take yet another title.
Full results and standings can be found here.
Source: www.eju.net
Image: www.ijf.org
