The Dushanbe U63kg Grand Slam was targeted by Lubjana Piovesana, from Austria, who started at the top of the table, but did not have an easy time. In the final, the number one seed never looked in danger. A single waza-ari from a well-timed left-side seoi-otoshi was enough to seal victory and a gold medal worth 1000 points in the penultimate Grand Slam of this Olympic cycle for the Austrian. The gold goes to Piovesana and the silver to the neutral athlete Dali Liluashvili (AIN).
Piovesana started with a first-round bye and led to a second-round contest against Askilashvili (GEO), a competitor she lost to in her last fight. This time it was different and the Austrian took victory comfortably before falling into trouble against Badurova (AIN).
The first bronze medal match was contested by Belkadi (ALG) and Cabana Perez (ESP) after the Algerian dispatched Badurova in the repechage. For the gold medalist at last month’s African Championships, a medal here would be a first for her at Grand Slam level. At 31, this will probably be her last Olympic cycle and so she is in shape at the right time. With still more than a minute on the clock, she countered the Spanish judoka with a tani-otoshi and scored waza-ari, managing the rest of the contest intelligently, without losing her head under the pressure of the tempting medal win. It was finally bronze for Belkadi, and a respectable 5th place, also with valuable points, for Cabana Perez.
The second bronze medal went to Croatia or Italy with Oberan or Russo. The Croatian put a lot of pressure on her opponent, offering two penalties to Russo at the beginning of the dispute. With a minute and a half remaining, a quick change of direction knocked Russo off balance and she fell backwards, but with both hands behind her. The waza-ari was called and immediately followed by Russo’s third shido. Oberan ran off the mat to hug her coach, thrilled with her medal and overall performance.
The winning Piovesana made a mistake early on and was hit by a waza-ari, forcing a dramatic change of strategy. Chasing the score is risky and stressful, but the advantage is that it refines the objective and for Piovesana it brings all the rules into focus. She did everything right from there and Badurova was penalized 3 times in fairly quick succession, sending Piovesana to the semi-final.
In the first semi-final, Poivesana released Russo by ippon with a perfectly placed seoi-otoshi to jump into the final with Liluashvili who won the semi-final by waza-ari against Cabana Perez.
