Matic defeats nemesis Marzok in Qingdao final

Finally Barbara Matic was able to overcome her nemesis Iljana Marzok who beat her four times before. The German title holder was defeated within two minutes by the Croatian talent by ippon. It was the first milestone of Matic this year where she suffered an injury for a long time, and took that time to recover and prepare for her comeback.

The ultimate favourite of the category was naturally the current world champion, Gevrise Emane (FRA), but she fell in her first bout against Irina Gazieva (RUS). The Russian perfectly controlled the French fighter, who was penalised several times for stepping out of the fighting area, before being thrown for waza-ari with a sweeping movement. In the semi-final Gazieva was defeated by the winner of last year’s Qingdao Grand Prix, Iljana Marzok (GER), who faced Barbara Matic (CRO) for the top prize of the event. Matic quickly scored a first waza-ari with seoi-nage and just before the halfway point of the fight, she doubled the score with a drop-seoi-nage, for waza-ari-awasette-ippon.

China put again an athlete in the final block with Zhou Chao (CHN) fighting for bronze against Kim Seongyeon (KOR). The Korean scored the first yuko with an attack to counter the attack of her opponent. Despite one penalty on each side, the score did not change until the final gong, with Kim winning the bronze.

The second bronze medal fight saw the second top seeded competitor, Katarzyna Klys (POL), and Irina Gazieva (RUS) stepping on tatami for a place on the podium. It cannot be said that Gazieva did not try, but Klys was too strong for her today, and harvested the scores with two yuko and two waza-ari, the first with a soto-makikomi almost perfect and the second one with a o-soto-gari.