During this second day of competition, two new categories were at stake: women -52kg and men -66kg. Were we going to witness again a double of the Abe siblings, who in Tokyo during the Olympic Games climbed on the highest step of the podium on the same day, writing a page in the history of judo, both magnificent and incredible? When opening the final block, everything was still possible but it was not the only possible scenario since on the one hand Chelsie Giles (GBR) and on the other hand Joshiro Maruyama (JPN) could write the story differently.
We were quickly settled in the women's category, with the final victory of Abe Uta. To say that her journey was easy is not quite true because she had to stay focused all day to finally win in the semi-finals against her favourite enemy, the Frenchwoman Amandine Buchard, and against the beautiful surprise, Chelsie Giles, in the final. Already with a third world title, at only 22 years old, where will Abe Uta stop?
It therefore still remained for her brother Hifumi to achieve the same feat, for us to relive the emotion of Tokyo 2020. To be honest, after Maruyama's demonstration during the preliminaries, it seemed that Abe would have a hard time to win in the final and he actually did have a hard time but he won. Uta, who was in the first row to watch her brother, and Hifumi, while walking off the tatami, could hug one another. Once again they write history.
On the third day of competition, two new categories will be in action: women -57kg and men -73kg. There is lots of emotion still to come and we are looking forward to it.