The final for women U70kg at the Grand Slam in Tbilisi Sanne van Dijke and Barbara Matic looked to be fairly even at the beginning but the Croatian double world champion had a look of total commitment and enjoyment on her face and she rolled underneath the Dutch number 1 with a seoi-otoshi for ippon to take the gold. She almost made it look easy, almost.
Through the first couple of rounds the top 4 of the category, Van Dijke (NED), Matic (CRO), Teltsidou (GRE) and Butkereit (GER) forged their way forward towards the final block. Van Dijke and Matic in particular can be almost guaranteed to wreak havoc among the less well decorated opposition, their consistency being confirmed over and over again on the Tour.
That fight for bronze was almost over before it began though. Butkereit, having arrived 2-0 down to Scoccimarro from previous World Judo Tour meetings, didn’t hesitate for a single moment, attacked with an uchi-mata which forced Scoccimarro to bail out. Butkereit latched on and spun her over tying her up in knots to hold for 20 seconds and win by ippon before even half a minute had elapsed. It was a confident win and almost certainly secured her spot in Paris this summer.
The second bronze medal contest was fought by Teltsidou and Coughlan. More accurately, it was a whitewash in favor of the Greek who threw immediately after ‘hajime’ with a massive left sided tsuri-goshi. Coughlan will be disappointed with the result but he takes away valuable points, edging closer to seeding at the Games while Teltsidou puts the frighteners on all opposition, throwing bigger and faster than most ever did on the WJT.
All 4 reached the quarter-final stages with little to worry about. In pool B, Butkereit’s opposition there was Aoife Coughlan (AUS) who sits just outside Olympic seeding in the qualification list, needing to place higher than 7th to improve her position. The quarter-final is a guarantee of at least 7th place and so one more win, whether in the quarter-final or the repechage, is all she needs to increase her ranking points, to possibly join -63 kg teammate Haecker in a seeding position at the Games and make history for Australia.
Van Dijke won his quarter against Pogacnik (SLO) on shidos and Matic won his against Jager (NED), so that was the one and two safely through to the semi-finals but Teltsidou and Butkereit were not so obedient to the ranking, the Greek beaten by Butkereit’s teammate and the German beaten by Coughlan, giving the Australian a new set of points to tick off a big part of today’s goal.
In the semi-finals Coughlan looked like the sure-fire winner in waiting but with just 3 seconds to go he was dropped under by the Dutch Olympic medallist for a reviewed but confirmed waza-ari, against the run of play. Matic then followed suit to line-up the highest quality final possible, dropping Scoccimaro into the bronze medal contest to fight his compatriot.