Second Grand Slam gold for confident Austrian Lubjana Piovesana

The Grand Slam of Dushanbe U63kg was a target for Lubjana Piovesana of Austria who began at the top of the sheet but didn’t have an easy time of it. In the final, the number one seed never looked to be in danger. A single waza-ari from a well timed left-sided seoi-otoshi was enough to seal the victory and a gold medal worth 1000 points in the penultimate Grand slam of this Olympic cycle for the Austrian. Gold goes to Piovesana and silver to Neutral Athlete Dali Liluashvili (AIN).

Piovesana started with a bye in round one led to a second round contest against Askilashvili (GEO), a competitor she lost to last time they fought. This time was different though and the Austrian took the win comfortably before diving into hot water against Badurova (AIN).

The first bronze medal contest was fought by Belkadi (ALG) and Cabana Perez (ESP) after the Algerian dispatched Badurova in the repechage. For the gold medallist at last month’s African Championships, a medal here would be the first for her at grand slam level At 31 years old, this is likely to be her last Olympic cycle and so she has been coming into form at just the right moment. With still more than a minute on the clock she countered the Spanish judoka with a tani-otoshi and scored waza-ari, managing the rest of the contest intelligently, not losing her head under the pressure of the tantalising medal win. It was bronze for Belkadi, at last, and a respectable 5th place finish, also coming with valuable points, for Cabana Perez.

The second bronze medal was headed to either Croatia or Italy with Oberan or Russo. The Croatian put a lot of pressure on her opponent offering Russo two penalties early in the contest. With one and a half minutes to go, a swift change of direction unbalanced Russo and she landed towards the back but with both hands down behind her. The waza-ari was scored and immediately followed by Russo’s 3rd shido. Oberan ran off the mat to hug her coach, thrilled with the medal and the overall performance.

Winner Piovesana made a mistake early on and was countered for a waza-ari, forcing a dramatic change of strategy. Chasing the score is risky and stressful but the plus is that it refines the objective and for Piovesana it brought every rule into clear focus. She did it all right from there and Badurova was penalised 3 times in fairly quick succession, sending Piovesana into the semi-final.

In the first semi-final Poivesana threw Russo for ippon with a perfectly placed seoi-otoshi to jump into the final with Liluashvili who won her semi-final by waza-ari against Cabana Perez.