Mascha Ballhaus victory counts for two

Far from being a big favourite of the tournament, Mascha Ballhaus (GER) went through the preliminary rounds of the Grand Slam in Tashkent, to join the Japanese champion in the final, while the two favourites Diyora Keldiyorova (UZB) and Fabienne Kocher could not get out of the trap of the first contests.

In the final, Ballhaus had to fight the double world champion, in 2017 and 2021 Ai Shishime. The German judoka was penalised with a first shido for stepping out of the competition area but against the odds, against her famous opponent, Ballhaus took her chance and after starting with an uchi-mata, she totally changed direction with an o-uchi-gari to score a beautiful waza-ari. There were still more than two minutes to go and Mascha Ballhaus perfectly controlled Shishime to build a first victory in a grand slam. A sensational victory for Ballhaus who captured her first IJF World Tour medal, even gold.

Ana Perez Box (ESP) and Yingwei Liu (CHN) qualified for the first match for a bronze medal. Perez Box scored a first waza-ari with a clever combination of o-soto and ko-soto gari and then had to deal with the pressure put on her by Liu, who attacked non-stop. With a handful of seconds left, Liu launched a last desperate attack that was far off the score. When the final gong resonated it took a few more seconds for Perez Box to realise that she had won the bronze medal.

Ranked third in the world and seeded number one, Reka Pupp (HUN), second in Paris a few weeks ago and third at the last World Judo Masters in Jerusalem at the end of 2022, had enough self-confidence to hope to reach the category final. However, she still had a pitfall to overcome, in the shape of Ai Shishime (JPN).

Maria Siderot (POR) could add a second medal for the Portuguese delegation after Costa's silver medal in the lower category but first she had to face Reka Pupp, who is one of the most consistent athletes on the circuit. After only 25 seconds, Sidero launched a first soto-makikomi and her head touched the tatami before any other body part, which led to her to being penalised with a hansoku-make.

Once again this is one of the points that was discussed during the referee seminar. If this special attack might not have looked dangerous, it was still a head dive and a first contact with the head, which can be dangerous, especially if young judoka want to do the same.