Maria Bernabeu grabs gold in Budapest, Anett Breitenbach celebrates bronze

With three Olympic champions at the tatami on Sunday the expectations were high for a spectacular second day of the Grand Prix in Budapest. The winner U70kg was Maria Bernabeu was not expected U70kg, a surprise victory for the ever smiling Spaniard who enjoyed her gold medal for the full 100%. Nobody complained that she won after a great day of judo.

Former Madrid European Open bronze medallist Maria Bernabeu won her first World Judo Tour event as Tbilisi Grand Prix winner Szaundra Diedrich (GER) was defeated in the -70kg final. Bernabeu was a composed figure in her final contest as she countered an ouchi-gari attempt to finally break the deadlock with a yuko and a minute left on the clock to hear her anthem played for the first time in an IJF setting. 

In the first semi-final top seed and Tokyo Grand Slam bronze medallist Laura Vargas Koch from Germany was beaten by her compatriot Diedrich in golden score. Both judoka train in Cologne and know each other as well as any two judoka in the world possibly can as the contest required 45 seconds of time with a shido for Vargas Koch for passivity giving the win to Diedrich. In the second semi-final Bernabeucomfortably dispatched former vice world champion Anett Breitenbach-Meszaros with osaekomi-waza as the home fighter could not deal with the power of her Spanish opponent. Breitenbach survived an interesting pool Dutch wondergirl Sanne van Dijke, Japanese Chizuru Arai and Cuban Onix Cortes and had the cheers of the homecrowd as they all hope she can be back at her previous status as four times World medallist and ouble finallist.

The first bronze medal was surprisingly won by Breitenbach who secured her country’s second medal of the competition by seeing off African Championships silver medallist Assmaa Niang (MAR). The Hungarian showed more desire and won by the narrow advantage of shido penalties and soaked up the roaring reception from the home fans. The second bronze medal was claimed by Vargas Koch who was busier and more positive than Astana Grand Prix silver medallist Esther Stam of Georgia, but coached by her old Dutch coach. Vargas Koch was separated from her opponent at full time on shido penalties in a scoreless contest as Stam was penalised twice while the referee did not need to reprimand the former on any occasion.