Natascha Ausma grabs Grand Slam gold

In the absence of the best in the world, the official draw of the category made it possible for some surprises. Two Dutch judoka Natascha Ausma and Karen Stevenson understood this perfectly and exploited every opportunity to meet in in an all Dutch final.

Coming from her category U70kg, she tried U78kg since 2019. Ausma defeated Stevenson in the Dutch Championships final not knowing they were able to stand in a Grand Slam final together. The switch U78kg has been successful so far, not only because she was relatively unknown but also because Ausma has the technique, will and skills to be successful in this category where the Dutch competition is so tough with both Steenhuis and Verkerk, the more experienced athletes. Nonetheless also Stevenson is quite experience albeit on a somewhat lower level. Without the two German rivals Wagner and Malzahn there were simply more chances for the rest of the field.

As this is usually the case when two athletes from the same country meet in the final block, none of them were really able to take advantage of the other, until a sequence on the floor that looked like any other, but there was a slight difference that offered a chance to Ausma to apply a shime-waza, that she didn't let go of and resulted in ippon for Ausma.

Bernadette Graf (AUT), second in Tel Aviv in 2020, without any doubt hoped for a final, but had to settle for the bronze medal match against Inbar Lanir (ISR), third in Tashkent recently. Unfortunately for the Austrian it took only 9 seconds for Lanir to score ippon with a massive ura-nage.

The Chinese women's team is particularly well known for its ability to be present at major world events and the world and Olympic titles won by the Chinese competitors are countless. As these great events loom on the horizon, we begin to see the reappearance of Chinese female competitors in the placings. Should we see this as a sign? We will find out soon. In the meantime, Ma Zhenzhao (CHN) found herself in a position to win bronze against Russian Aleksandra Babintseva and that is actually what she did. Totally dominated by the strong grip of Babintseva, Ma resisted until the golden score period, where she exploited a mistake from the Russian to score with a counterattack for ippon.