Chinese heavyweight Yu Song takes second World Masters

Chinese Yu Song prolonged her Masters title in Rabat. The question at the beginning of the day was on the side of Idalys ORTIZ (CUB). Is the Olympic and world champion capable of winning the Masters’ title? The answer turned out to be no, as the Cuban was defeated twice, by Svitlana Yaromka during the preliminaries and by Nihel Chikrouhou in repechage.

Thus the final opposed Yamabe Kanae (JPN) and the winner of the last edition of the Masters, in Tyumen 2013. After fifty seconds, Yamabe was penalised with a first shido for passivity and one more time a little later. With YU continuing to attack, Yamabe again received a shido, while both athletes entered the last minute of fight. With three shido against her opponent, YU finally won the gold medal adding a second World Master title to her prize list.

The first bronze medal was decided between Nihel Chikhrouhou (TUN) and Tachimoto Megumi (JPN), who also already won the World Masters, but this was in Baku in 2011. After having been penalised for passivity with a shido, Tachimoto launched a left handed ashi-guruma for waza-ari. The second penalty received by Tachimoto didn’t change anything in the final result and the Japanese could add one medal to her team.

Franziska Konitz (GER) and Svitlana Yaromka UKR) fought for the second bronze medal. During most of the fight, neither of the competitors were able to score until Konitz executed a o-uchi-gari for yuko that offered her the bronze medal.