Ukraine keeps surprising, this time with Anastasiia Superson

Two athletes who were not among the top seeds who qualified for the final of the U40kg category of the 2022 edition of the World Cadet Championships: Anastasiia Superson (UKR) and Begumnaz Dogruyol (TUR).

Both judoka jumped to action immediately, looking for strong movement, a score or the transition to ne-waza. At this little game, Superson was a more precise, literally hunting for a good ne-waza sequence, probably inspired by her compatriot, double world champion and Olympic medallist, Daria Bilodid who was cadet world champion in 2015 in Sarajevo too.

This is what eventually came to fruition and Superson became the first cadet world champion of this edition of the event, with an unstoppable shime-waza for ippon.

With two Turkish women on the podium this team effort is again a strong team performance, for the country that was particularly successful two weeks ago in Ecuador, on the occasion of the Junior World Championships, now again a good presence at the first day in Sarajevo. The coming years promise to be great for Türkiye.

In the first match for a bronze medal, Laziza Haydarova (UZB), the number 1 seed, and Patricia Tomankova (SVK) faced each other. After four minutes and a virgin scoreline with nothing on the board but a penalty, Haydarova and Tomankova entered the golden score period to decide the winner.

With one more shido to her name, Tomankova was in danger, but everything was still possible and the Slovak judoka scored a waza-ari with an opportunist’s counterattack. The bronze medal went to Patricia Tomankova.

In the second match for a bronze medal, we found on the tatami, the other Turkish competitor Zilan Ertem (TUR) against Nina Auer (AUT). Therefore, the top 4 seeds of the group were all fighting for bronze medals, a noteworthy statistic. First to action, Ertem scored a waza-ari with a yoko-otoshi. It did not take a lot more time for Ertem to add one more waza-ari from a low tai-otoshi and a clear win in less than one minute.