-78 kg: Bellandi Pulls Rank!

The afternoon session began though with the first repechage contest of this 6th day of competition was won on penalties, Zhenzhao Ma, world silver medallist from China, just edging the contest over Lytvynenko (UKR). Ma goes into the bronze medal contest.

For a place in the second bronze medal contest Takayama (JPN) threw Guusje Steenhuis (NED) with a huge tsuri-goshi for ippon having been under pressure earlier in the contest.

The first semi-final between Wagner (GER) and Lanir (ISR) was brutal whirlwind of non-stop action, each second offering the chance for one or the other or both to throw. In the end an ash-guruma attempt by Wagner was met with a massive pick-up and ippon for the 2023 world champion, Lanir.

The second semi-final was also far from cautious, Sampaio (POR) and Bellandi (ITA) each looking to throw. Seoi-otoshi attempts from both, fast ko-uchi-gari strikes from Sampaio. It was a Bellandi seoi which scored first at the halfway mark but she kept attacking with the same technique and came close to being penalised due to a lack of preparation. She managed to hold her nerve though and stepped into her first Olympic final, sending Sampaio into a bronze medal contest.

The first bronze medal contest was hard work for both athletes. Ma has an unorthodox right cross grip which makes Wagner’s more traditional judo difficult to engage with. No score was registered but at 30 seconds to go Wagner applied a strong shime-waza which was as close as one can get to scoring ippon. In the next exchange Ma launched an enormous ko-soto-gake to finished the discussion and take the bronze medal home to China.

Takayama and Sampaio faced off for the second bronze medal. The Portuguese judoka dictated the pace from the beginning and Takayama struggled to keep up. It led to a first waza-ari at half-time and despite Takayama’s acceleration, it was doubled close to the end to finish the contest, a seoi-otoshi being the winning throw.

The final was intense, a lot of action, a lot of strategy, but intense thought. Lanir (ISR) picked up two penalties for passivity while Bellandi took on for a false attack but the pace was led by the Italian and in the last minute, while controlling Lanir’s grips, the latter focused too hard on breaking the grip and stepped forward as Bellandi spun under her to roll her on to her back for waza-ari. In the remaining time the Israeli athlete charged forward but without an attack of her own and was therefore given a third passivity penalty to send the world number one to the top of the podium.

The podium was reached by 4 new countries today: Italy, Israel, China and Portugal. All 4 athletes were over-the-moon with their medal-winning performances and showed nothing but joy as the Italian anthem rang out in the Champs-de-Mars Arena.

Alice Bellandi said, "This is the dream I had every single night. I have had to hold on to my faith so much and of course my coach, he is my partner in crime. I have had many stupid negative thoughts in my mind today; you know, whenever I’m number one I don’t win but I stayed focused here and the plan was good and this time I won.”