Golden Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard strong in Tbilisi

Number one seed, Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard started her engines after a rather balanced first 3 minutes of the final in Tbilis for women U63g against last year's European bronze medallist, Angelika Szymanska (POL). The last minute was fast approaching, when Beauchemin-Pinard managed to launch her seoi-otoshi for an important waza-ari.

The final contest was not over though as it was immediately followed, Szymanska nearly catching the Canadian judoka with a sankaku-jime combined with an armlock. Would she be able to unfold the arm with only a few seconds left? Everyone was holding their breath but Beauchemin-Pinard escaped to celebrate a new victory, comforting her world number one position.

After her silver medal in Baku in February and a disappointing Paris Grand Slam, earlier that month, the Canadian judoka has had ups and downs. World number one in the category and usually very consistent in her results, she wanted to show that Paris was just an accident and she demonstrated it in the best possible way by qualifying for the semi-final after wins against Sarai Padilla Guerrero (ESP), Gaetane Deberdt (FRA) and the veteran Ketleyn Quadros (BRA) with a superb seoi-otoshi for ippon. In the semi-final, she faced Jing Tang, who was not seeded but had a very good run through the preliminaries.

The first bronze medal contest saw Joanne Van Lieshout (NED) and Laura Fazliu (KOS) stepping on to the tatami to determine the last judoka on the podium. Van Lieshout had looked dominant against Krssakova (AUT) and Zachova (CZE) in th preliminaries but slipped up against the Chinese athlete, foiling a potentially robust run to the final as she had planned. The bronze medal contest began badly also for Van Lieshout who was thrown for waza-ari but as the end of the contest approached the Dutch judoka took her chance to turn over Laura Fazliu and pinned her down for ippon. The bronze medal was therefore assigned to Joanne Van Lieshout.

The second bronze medal contest opposed Jisu Kim (KOR) and Jing Tang (CHN). It was an interesting contest indeed with both judoka trying their best to throw or conclude on the floor. As the golden score period approached, Tang had to work carefully having been penalised twice for small infringements. This was what made the difference in the end, when she offered a false attack a third time delivering the victory to Jisu Kim. Tang was close to winning but too many small mistakes cost her the medal. If she corrects these, she will be dangerous for many judoka.