Japan retains the mixed team world title

At the team World Championships the team of Japan claimed the world title, which is not a surprise. Still given the Olympic Games outcome where France captured the gold, it should have been more tight, but the outcome was the same as the Tokyo World Championships in 2019.

Frenchman Mathieu Alexis seemed superior and stronger against Tajima Goki but The Japanese scored the opener of the match by ippon. Romane Dicko vs. Wakaba Tomita was a classic and it was Dicko's who scored waza-ari followed by oseikomi. The heavyweights brought up Joseph Terhec vs. Hyoga Ota where Ota scored waza-ari in a sweep and won in the end by oseikomi and gave Japan the lead. France though came back when Sarah Leonie Cysique defeated Haruka Funakubo. Joan-Benjamin Gaba defeated against Kenshi Haradain in ne-waza. France relied on Marie-Eve Gahié, who faced Saki Niizoe but got strangled by Niizoe and gave Japan the world title.

France had defeated Georgia and China and face Israel in the semi-final in a top match. The match included top matches such as Romane Dicko vs Raz Hershko and Sarah Leonie Cysique vs Timna Nelson Levy and the French had to give everything to leave Israel for a possible bronze.

The same could be said for Germany that gave a good impression throughout the day, but couldn’t stand the Japanese quality in the semi. Germany defeated Mongolia and Ukraine. Japan simply has a great backup team with superb names, enough to beat the German team.

Bronze for Germany and Israel

Germany was ready to catch a bronze medal and recovered quickly. Trippel this time won his clontest, but Wagner lost hers against the heavy Shiyan Xu, who scored waza-ari and evened the score. Johannes Frey defeated Ruixuan Li with waza-ari and osae-komi. Qi Cai tried to draw 2-2 against Pauline Starke. The German started as favourite, and despite the sensational performance of the Chinese, Germany won and went 3-1, one victory away from bronze. Daga Qing had the onus to keep China's hopes alive but Igor Wandtke scored a massive waza-ari with twenty seconds to go.

Israel had to fight the Dutch team that had previously lost to Japan. Frank De Wit opened the score in advance of the Dutch against Guy Gurevitch, Steenhuis Guusje lost to heavyweight Raz Hershko which is not a surprise. World bronze medallist Michael Korrel had an exciting contest against Peter Paltchik, winner of his three bouts in the preliminaries. In the golden score it was Korrel to take back the lead for the Dutch. Timna Nelson Levy didn't overcame Pleuni Cornelisse. Ido Levin scored ippon against Ivo Verhorstert and gave Israel a 3-2 lead on the scoreboard. Maya Goshen could spike but Sanne Vermeer could equalise at three and force a tie break but Vermeer got injured and had to leave. Israel took the bronze medal like at the Olympic Games team event.