Gankhaich Bold had the arena behind her, one of two host nation finalists on this second day in Ulaanbaatar. She faced Kirari Yamaguchi (JPN), a winner in Tashkent this year and Zagreb last year.
Bold was far more active in the first minute or so and she forced Yamaguchi to take a first shido for non-combativity, but from that point on, Bold seemed to be struggling with a left arm problem and her pace dropped. This allowed Yamaguchi to find her rhythm and things tightened up between them. By the second minute of extra time, each athlete had collected two penalties.
It wasn’t until the 5th minute of extra time that Yamaguchi changed her tactics and attempted a sacrifice technique. This turned out to be the wrong choice as Bold capitalised quickly, freeing her trapped leg to pin her opponent for gold. Congratulations to Bold and the Mongolian team for their first gold medal at this home tournament.
In the first bronze medal contest Nina Simic (CRO) took on Aono (JPN) but came under fire pretty quickly, an o-uchi-gari placing a yuko on Aono’s side of the board after just 36 seconds. Simic is not a push over though and equalised fast with a counter. Aono was also unfazed and threw again with the o-uchi-gari to double her score and re-take the lead.
In this yo-yo of a contest, you can guess what happened next; it was Simic’s turn and she caught the timing perfectly to throw for waza-ari with a ko-soto-gake. She almost held her opponent down to finish the match too but couldn’t quite close it down and so they went back to the middle. With 9 seconds left and a waza-ari to catch, Aono went for the o-uchi-gari one more time and was duly countered for Simic’s second waza-ari. Nina Simic claimed her first grand slam medal after a great day of gutsy judo.
The second bronze medal would go to either Friederike Stolze of Germany or France’s Gaetane Deberdt. Initially it look as if the German would take the win when she countered the French judoka for a waza-ari but she then made a big mistake on the floor, not protecting herself from obvious danger. Deberdt freed her trapped leg easily and held Stolze for ippon.
Final (-63 kg)
Bronze Medal Fights (-63 kg)
