2012 bronze medalist Marti Malloy seems to be in good form with less than two months remaining until the Olympics in Rio as she won a bronze medal in the women’s -57kg division this weekend at the Judo Grand Prix event in Budapest, Hungary. Malloy has now won three medals in her three grand prix/grand slam events this year. Malloy needed just six seconds to score an ippon in her quarterfinal match against Sappho Coban of Germany but lost her semifinal to Japan’s Momo Tamaoki on shido penalties 2-1. Tamaoki went on to win the gold. Malloy won bronze by defeating another German, Johanna Mueller, on shido penalties 1-0 in her bronze medal match.
Angelica Delgado had her most successful grand prix event of the year winning her opener with a waza-ari against Uzbekistan’s Diyora Keldiyorova to reach the quarterfinals. A yuko allowed Romania’s Larisa Florian to advance to the semifinals and Delgado lost on a yuko again in the repechage bracket to France’s Astride Gneto. It was the first finish inside the top 32 for Delgado this year. Adonis Diaz also posted a season best finish reaching the round of 16, though it was from a bye. Diaz might have gone further but he ran into eventual gold medalist Dai Aoki of Japan and that match lasted only 17 seconds before Aoki had secured an ippon.
Sunday World Masters gold medalists Travis Stevens and Kayla Harrison, will compete in the men’s -81kg division and the women’s -78kg division. Also competing in the men’s -90kg division will be Colton Brown who finished seventh in the last grand prix event in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
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