Spain’s Sandra Sanchez underscored her status as the queen of the kata, winning karate’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in Tokyo 2020 at the Nippon Budokan arena, the spiritual home of karate in Japan.
It was a fitting final on karate’s debut at the Olympic Games with two of the best kata specialists in the world going head-to-head.
Defending world champion Sanchez beat Japan’s SHIMIZU Kiyou in the individual kata final, scoring 28.06 points.
Producing a routine that belied her years, the 39-year-old Sanchez added to her growing legend, with SHIMIZU earning the silver with a score of 27.88.
Sanchez was dismissed as being too old for the karate kata but has silenced her critics winning the 2018 world title on home soil and now, just over a month from her 40th birthday, earned Olympic gold.
Earlier, LAU Mo Sheung Grace of Hong Kong, China and Italy’s Viviana Bottaro secured the bronze medals in their respective bouts. LAU became the sports first medallist at the Olympics beating Turkey’s Dilara Bozan.
In the second bronze-medal match, Bottaro was in dominant form beating U.S. karateka KOKUMAI Sakura by more than a point.
Leave a Comment