Hiromi Endo simply loves golden Budapest

Japanese judoka Endo Hiromi won her third IJF title in Budapest as she repeated her 2016 Grand Prix victory in the city where she also won the Cadet Worlds in 2009. Ekaterinburg Grand Slam winner Endo is Japan’s number three at U48kg.

With world champion Tonaki Funa and Olympic bronze medallist Kondo Ami (JPN) ahead of her but now has two gold medals on the IJF World Judo Tour in 2018. Endo defeated Portugal European Open winner Yamazaki Tamami (JPN) in the final by a waza-ari score from a morote-seoi-nage.

In the first semi-final Endo dispatched European Championships silver medallist Distria Krasniqi (KOS) after five minutes of golden score with a booming morote-seoi-nage for ippon. In the second semi-final Tbilisi Grand Prix gold medallist Marusa Stangar (SLO) lost out to Yamazaki by ippon.

The first bronze medal contest was won by world number 16 Stangar who beat top seed Milica Nikolic (SRB). Slovenia’s Stangar fought back from being a waza-ari behind to level the score and threw with an ouchi-gari for a second and match-winning score.                                                    

The second bronze medal was won by Krasniqi who saw off world number 24 Anne Sophie Jura (BEL). Jura will have to return another day to make a breakthrough on the IJF World Judo Tour while Kosovo’s Krasniqi is going from strength to strength at U48kg and finally looks settled in the lightest weight category.