Kanae Yamabe on her way to World Championships qualification

Kanae Yamabe took a gold medal at the Grand Prix of Dusseldorf. With this victory she is on her way to qualification for the World Championships together with unrivalled Megumi Tachimoto. In the women’s +78kg weight category, the surprise came from the fact that the two top seeded athletes, Franziska KONITZ (GER) and YU Song (CHN) were not able to enter the final, the Chinese being defeated during the preliminary rounds. It was the third and fourth seeded competitors who finally fought for gold, YAMABE Kanae (JPN) and Nihel CHEIKH ROUHOU (TUN).

In the final, CHEIKH ROUHOU was rapidly penalized with a first shido, and again before the halfway point of the fight. Both fighters looked set to trade penalties, until YAMABE Kanae applied a sweeping movement with perfect timing for ippon.

Among the four athletes qualified in the bronze medal fights, only one was not seeded, Carolin WEISS (GER), the three others being the two Ukrainian Iryna KINDZERSKA (UKR) and Svitlana IAROMKA and the top seeded and third in the world ranking list, Franziska KONITZ (GER), who had an occasion, together with her teammate WEISS, to add one more medal to the German prize list. Thus the first bronze medal fight took place between Iryna KINDZERSKA and Carolin WEISS (GER) and after a long gripping battle, WEISS won the bout by two penalties against one.

Svitlana IAROMKA (UKR) and Franziska KONITZ (GER) faced for the second bronze medal on the podium and this match had exactly the same outcome as the previous one, as KONITZ won for Germany with two penalties against one.