This Sunday, Catarina Costa won the bronze medal in the -48kg category of the Tokyo Grand Slam, making her the only one of the five Portuguese judokas in Japan to reach a podium.
After being exempt from the first round, Catarina Costa defeated South Korea’s Kyeongha Lee with ‘ippon’ in the second round and eliminated Japan’s Kano Miyaki in the quarter-finals, also with ‘ippon’, to qualify for the semi-finals. finals -finals.
However, in the semi-finals she would lose to Spain’s Julia Figueroa by ‘waza-ari’, meaning she failed to qualify for the -48 kg final.
In the battle for the bronze medal, the Portuguese judoka won with ‘ippon’ over Chen-Hao Lin from Taipei.
In the same category, Raquel Brito started by winning the first fight, against Gabonese Virgínia Aymard, with ‘ippon’, but was defeated in the second round by Baasankhuu Bavuudorj, from Mongolia, with ‘waza-ari’.
At -63 kg, Bárbara Timo reached the semi-finals, where she was defeated by ‘ippon’ by Japan’s Miku Takaichi, who would later win the gold medal.
In the battle for bronze, Timo lost by ‘ippon’ to the Dutch Joanne van Lieshout, in what was the Portuguese judoka’s sixth match in the competition.
She started by beating Spain’s Cristina Cabana Pérez in the first round with ‘waza-ari’, knocked out Israel’s Gili Sharir with ‘ippon’ in the second and won the Netherlands’ Geke van den Berg in the third round. by ‘waza-ari’.
In the quarter-finals she defeated Slovenian Andreja Leski by ‘ippon’, before losing to Miku Takaichi in the semi-finals.
Joana Diogo was placed at -52 kg in the second round, where she was eliminated by Mongolian Sosorbaram Lkhagvasuren, by ‘ippon’, after overcoming North American Malia Soberano in the first fight.
In the men’s category, the only Portuguese representative was Miguel Gago, at -66 kg, who was exempt from the first round, defeated the Colombian Juan Hernández in the second with ‘waza-ari’, but was finally defeated in the third fight by the Moldovan Denis Vieru, by ‘ippon’.
Source: DN
