Rafaela Silva is back with gold in Budapest

Olympic champion Rafaela Silva of Brazil made an overdue appearance on the top of the podium on day one as the Brazilian hero defeated European silver medallist Theresa Stoll (GER) in the final. Silva last won gold at Rio 2016 and her last IJF gold medal was also back in 2016 (Tbilisi Grand Prix) but rediscovered her best form today.

The 2013 world champion went ahead by rolling Stoll over for a waza-ari and the German replied with a waza-ari of her own with the same technique. Silva had the final say as she rolled her opponent over once more for a second and match-winning waza-ari in the closing seconds.

In the first semi-final Stoll utilised her ashi-waza to defeat former world champion Udaka Nae (JPN) by ippon in golden score. In the second semi-final Zagreb Grand Prix bronze medallist Karakas Hedvig (HUN) fell to Silva by a waza-ari which was the only score of the contest.

The first bronze medal was won by Karakas who tapped out Zagreb Grand Prix bronze medallist Jessica Klimkait (CAN) with a trademark juji-gatame. Ne-waza ace Karakas won the first medal for the hosts and matched her result from Croatia to continue her strong start to her Tokyo 2020 qualification campaign. 

The second bronze medal was won by Paris Grand Slam gold medallist Christa Deguchi (CAN) over former teammate Udaka. Olympic champion Rafaela Silva (BRA) ended the Canadian’s 26-fight winning-streak in the quarter-final but bounced back to win her third medal from the three Tokyo 2020 qualification events to date. Udaka was caught with an ouchi-gari for ippon and may now miss out on international call-ups in the future.