The perfect streak of Italy accomplished by Veronica Toniolo

Veronica Toniolo gave Italy a perfect streak of three world champions in a row, in 2021 Assunta Scutto, in 2022 Giulia Carna and Toniolo captured the world title this time in Odivelas Portugal. Adding the three world titles in 2018 and you can conclude that Italy is one of the most promising judo countries in the world. It won’t last long before Toniolo will also pick up the big ones at senior level.

Veronica Toniolo is already a well-known judoka on the World Judo Tour. 17th on the senior World Ranking List (3rd in juniors), a grand slam and grand prix medallist, she is no less still a junior and remained in third place during the previous edition of the junior worlds, in Guayaquil, last year. Her objective this season was therefore clear and precise, to do better and show that she is part of the elite of world judo, in both age categories, a great performance.

With her experience, the European and (now) World champion went through the preliminary rounds without trembling and qualified for the final, where she found the Japanese Riko Honda, who did not have easy contests earlier but still managed to reach the last contest of the category. Brazil expected a lot from their two athletes, including Bianca Reis, the number one seed, but she failed to block the rise of Honda, who herself challenged the other Brazilian, Beatriz Comanche, in the semi-final.

It remained to be seen whether Toniolo would be able to stop the Japanese festival, after the four titles on the first day. She was undoubtedly the one with the sharpest weapons for this. This year was her last chance to complete the series of becoming World Champion in Cadets, European Champion in Cadets and European Champion in Juniors and today she accomplished this great performance becoming Junior World Champion preparing for a new era in her career.

In the final, the first alert was for Toniolo, who dominated with her strong right kumi-kata, but who was close to being caught in ne-waza. The contest became more balanced, Toniolo always being first with a very strong grip but Honda being first to attack. Then Toniolo used her dominant kumi-kata to launch sumi-gaeshi attacks that were close to false attacks.

They still showed that the Italian was more active though and she eventually won the contest by penalties. It was a tactical win for Veronica Toniolo, but a win that shows her capacity to already integrate new dimensions in her judo. This gold medal also comes as the cherry on the cake for the Italian delegation, which already showed some great judo from the beginning of the event.

In the first match for a bronze medal, we saw Julie Beurskens (NED) against Pihla Salonen (FIN). It took 3:55 to see the first shido on the scoreboard with Salonen being penalised for passivity but only 8 seconds of golden score for Julie Beurskens to score ippon with a prefect left-handed seoi-nage. The bronze medal was for the Netherlands.

Adriana Rodriguez Salvador (ESP) and Beatriz Comanche (BRA) faced each other for access to the podium. Under pressure, Comanche performed a surprise o-soto-gari for a waza-ari, but it took only a few seconds for Rodriguez Salvador to score back with a circling uchi-mata. It was time for golden score, a very tight one where both judoka were looking for the throw, but in that game Comanche was the more active judoka and Rodriguez Salvador was penalised too many times to win the medal and so the bronze was for Beatriz Comanche.