Untouchable Agbegnenou adds her eighth winning city

World champion Clarisse Agbegnenou of France worked her way through the U63kg field at the Grand Prix in Tbilisi to win all four of her contests to capture gold in Georgia. It was the eighth city in the world where the Olympic silver medallist won a World Tour event.

Agbegenou  was relaxed, as relaxed an athlete as you will ever see in a professional setting, as she let her judo flow without routing the opposition as she often tends to. Agbegnenou went back to her ouchi-gari, which served her well today, to throw former Zagreb Grand Prix winner Karolina Talach (POL) for ippon in the final.

In the first semi-final Agbegnenou bested Agadir Grand Prix bronze medallist Inbal Shemesh (ISR) by a waza-ari after a respectable effort from the Israeli challenger. In the second semi-final four-time Oceania Championships winner Katharina Haecker (AUS) was thrown by Talach with a textbook uchi-mata for ippon.

The first bronze medal contest was won by Junior world bronze medallist Lubjana Piovesana (GBR) against Haecker. Piovesana had lost their one previous meeting but avenged that today for a sweet win in added time. The Briton was coached by Seoul 1988 Olympic bronze medallist Dennis Stewart and coach and judoka were delighted when Haecker could not get off a seoi-nage and the referee awarded a contest-winning waza-ari score after 36 seconds of golden score. The last time that Great Britain won 2 medals in the same category in one day was in June 2017 when ben Fletcher and Philip Alcaraz took medals in Cancun at the Grand Prix U100kg.

The second bronze medal was won by Abu Dhabi Grand Slam silver medallist Lucy Renshall (GBR) as Great Britain wrapped up a bronze double. Renshall caught her opponent with an ouchi-gari with 12 seconds left in their scoreless contest for a waza-ari score and Shemesh could not produce a score in the closing seconds.