Shirine Boukli opens judo season with gold

French top lightweight Shirine Boukli was selected by her federation to take part in the Tokyo Olympics last year, no doubt she was not quite ready for the global level yet. From then on, each victory obtained on the circuit has been a step towards the Paris 2024 Games, which the judoka hopes will be more cheerful.

At the Grand Slam in Tel Aviv, Shirine Boukli qualified for the final, having knocked out Israeli Shira Rishony in the semi-finals. She still had to fight for the gold medal against Francesca Milani (ITA), who beat the two Serbians in the category in the elimination rounds.

Boukli seemed to be the first in action as she pushed her opponent to step out and get penalised for it. For her first competition of the year, the French judoka seemed to be in good form already. Half way through, the Italian was penalised a second time for passivity before Boukli engaged with an o-soto-gari for a clear waza-ari, registered as Milani landed on her side at an angle of 90°. Then Boukli just had to keep control, which she did without any problem to win the gold medal, the second in a row here in Tel Aviv.

The first match for the bronze medal saw Baasankhuu Bavuudorj (MGL), silver medallist in Paris less than two weeks ago, and Milica Nikolic (SRB) face off. As Nikolic was not able to compete, the bronze went to Baasankhuu Bavuudorj who steps on the podium for the second time in a row.

Julia Figueroa (ESP) and Shira Rishony (ISR) had four minutes to decide the second bronze medal. After a very close match where only shido applied, it took almost 4 minutes for Figueroa to execute a beautiful rotation and score with a superb seoi-nage to win the bronze. Israel will have to wait a bit longer for their first medal.