The second day of Grand Slam ad Abu Dhabi gave great satisfaction to the Italian athletes competing. Carlotta Advancedin fact, she put the bronze medal around her neck in the 63 kg, the first for her in a Grand Slam and Leonardo Valeriani placed seventh in the 73 kg, but Vincenzo Pelligra also had a good race in the 81 kg .
In fact, with a great ippon of soda tsurikomi goshi, Pelligra defeated the Kazakh Ruslan Mussayev in the golden score and, in the following round, he was overcome with an immobilization by the Azerbaijani Omar Rajabli. Leonardo Valeriani’s good performance has begun instead with the victory for wazari of kata guruma over the Russian Karim Abdulaev, who competes for the United Arab Emirates. It was then the turn of the German Aleksander Bernd Gabler, who Valeriani defeated with a knockout uchi gari ungenerously considered wazari. Then came the defeat in the quarter-finals against the Japanese Tatsuki Ishihara, three shidos to the golden score and, in added time, the defeat by ippon against Danil Lavrentev (IJF).
Carlotta Avanzato‘s great competition began with the ippon of uchi mata scored in the golden score on the Kazakh Esmigul Kuyulova, then replicating, again in the golden score, with the ippon of ko uchi maki komi on the Hungarian Brigitta Varga. With an ippon of juji gatame in the first seconds of the semi-final the Croatian Iva Oberan sent Carlotta Avanzato to the final for third place, which she won with another golden score victory (three shido), in this case, over the Brazilian Gabriella Moraes.
“I can say that the race in some categories was truly of a high level, and the setting had an impact. – commented the technician in the race Gianluca Valeriani– Apart from that episode in the semi-final, Carlotta didn’t really do anything wrong, perfect match, always clear. Leonardo gave everything in the quarterfinals with the Japanese, eight very tight minutes and after that both were destroyed and paid. Vincenzo did one of the best Ippons of the day, in the second match he was a little tense but still a good judoka.”
>>> SECOND DAY RESULTS