The 2007 Beijing Judo Open have ended up Friday with gold medals
in dispute went to the big names participating here at the "Good
Luck Beijing" Olympic test event.
Asian champion Yoshie Ueno choked Chinese judoka Yan Xuelan,
former Universiade champion in 2002, to take the women's 63kg title
with a breezy ippon win.
The 24-year-old, a younger sister of Athens Olympic champion
Masae Ueno in the women's 70kg category, claimed a gold medal at
last May's Asian Championships at Kuwait City in the same class,
piling up her winning streak in the continental tournament to three
in a row.
On the men's part, Italy's national champion Antonio Ciano
denied a late comeback from Japanese judoka Ono Takashi to win the
men's 81kg final with a waza-ari.
Earlier in the evening, two judokas from China failed their
third-place matches and saw the bronze medals go to Russian Yury
Panasenkov and Aea Min Sun of South Korea, both with ippon
wins.
The other two title of the 2007 Beijing Judo Open were won by
Russian Alim Gadanov and Frenchwoman Caroline Lantoine on
Thursday.
In the men's under-66kg final, judo world's nobody Gadanov took
a coup to upset Olympic gold medalist Masato Uchishiba of Japan
with a yuko, while Europe's promising judoka Lantoine took only 39
seconds to beat this year's Pan American Games silver medalist
Erika Miranda of Brazil with an ippon for the women's 52kg
title.
Xiao Jun, last year's Chinese national judo championships winner
of the women's 48kg category, settled for a bronze medal in the
women's half-lightweight event, and her compatriot Liu Changchun
won the third-place match with an ippon in the men's
half-lightweight category.
Pushing aside the unsatisfactory results from the Chinese
judokas, the organizing jobs done for the test event have drawn
good comments from all sides.
"Up to now the echos for the tournament are positive," said Quan
Liangzhu, the executive chairman of the tournament's organizing
committee.
"Both the international judo federation and national
administrative center of the sport speak highly of the event."
"We have completed the task of test the venue ahead of the judo
competitions of next year's Beijing Olympic Games," he added. "All
the operating systems function well. The competition serves
including the volunteer serves received good comment. So that we
can have confidence in holding next year's Olympic judo event."
The tournament, slated for November 15-16, went on at the
Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium, where to hold
the judo competitions of the 29th Olympic Games in 2008 as well as
the Olympic taekwondo event and the wheelchair Basketball and
wheelchair Rugby events at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games.
(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2007)