Tenth IJF Tour gold for Munkhbat Urantsetseg

At the Grand Prix in Zagreb the first gold medal went to Mongolia. One of five different winning nations on Friday where Israel took most of the medal. World silver medallist Munkhbat Urantsetseg of Mongolia continued her fine form and her country’s as she won her fifth Grand Prix gold medal on day one in Uzbekistan.

Munkhbat sent world number five Milica Nikolic (SRB) over with pure te-waza and as the Serbian landed Munkhbat was already applying the hold down and maintained full control for 20 seconds and Tashkent Grand Prix gold. For Nikolic it was the fourth time this year she won a silver medal at world level. Earlier she lost the final in Baku, Minsk and last week in Zagreb.

In the first semi-final world silver medallist Munkhbat submitted European bronze medallist Csernoviczki Eva (HUN) for ippon. In the second semi-final Nikolic defeated 2016 Tashkent Grand Prix winner Mariia Persidskaia (RUS). After a four minute stalemate, the Russian judoka was penalised with a shido for negative gripping after 20 seconds of added time to send her Serbian opponent into the gold medal contest.

The first bronze medal contest was won by Persidskaia who outclassed Nodira Gulova (UZB) in the first contest in the final block on day one. The Russian judoka showed quick feet to catch 29-year-old Gulova - who had won two Grand Prix medals, both bronze, and both in Tashkent – with a stinging ashi-waza movement for a waza-ari and then submitted her Uzbek adversary with a juji-gatame for ippon.

The second bronze medal was won by Csernoviczki who defeated world number eight Noa Minsker (ISR) after three minutes in golden score. Hungarian Csernoviczki is ready to embark on her third Olympic cycle towards Tokyo 2020 and went close to scoring with a sode-tsurikomi-goshi in regulation time. Minsker read subsequent attacks with the same technique and was able to maneuvere off a sasae-tsurikomi-ashi to land on her front. A shido for a false attack against the Israeli settled the contest.

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