Brigita Matic into the spotlight after Youth Olympic title

For a long time Brigita Matic has had to compete in the shadow of her older and hugely successful sister junior world champion Barbara Matic. Today Brigita won gold in the U78kg category at the Youth Olympics in Nanjing.

The final of the last individual female category was between Aleksandra Samardzic (BIH) and Brigita Matic (CRO). Halfway through the contest, despite both athletes trying to throw there was no score on the board and both fighters were penalized, Samardzic for passivity and Matic for a false attack. A few seconds later, Samardzic was penalized again, giving a small advantage to her Croatian opponent, who was able to keep this score until the end of the final.

The first bronze medal fight saw Sara Rodriguez (ESP) up against Unelle Snyman (RSA). After 50 seconds and a long sequence of attacks of the Spanish fighter, Snyman was penalized with a shido for passivity. Smaller than her opponent, Rodriguez had no difficulties to drop below the centre of gravity of Snyman, but without being really able to complete the attack to gain a score. Then the South African athlete was penalized again. The Spanish entered the last minute with a two shido advantage, that was reduced to one shido just before the end, enough to win the bronze medal.

In the second weight category, Elvismar Rodriguez (VEN) faced Morgane Duchene (FRA). The first strong attack came from the French side, when Duchene launched a sumi-gaechi at the limit of the fighting area for no score. One minute later, she launched the same movement for yuko. Nevertheless, Rodriguez looked much stronger and that was confirmed when the two competitors entered the last minute of the contest. Rodriguez countered Duchene with a sasae-tsuri-komi-achi for waza-ari, immediately continued on the ground with a hold down for ippon.