Asian Land Celebrates

The third day of the Championships brought triumph to Asian athletes. The finals in the men’s -74kg and in the women’s -49 kg featured this continent’s representatives. Iranian Masoud Hajizavareh and Korean Min‐Ah Ha won World Champion titles.

Semifinal contests in the women’s -49 kg opened the evening program of Day 3. In the first pair, twice Olympic champion Jingyu Wu faced Russian Svetlana Igumenova.

The competition’s host who is the championships rookie has already accomplished her minimal task guaranteeing the third place on the podium. To the home crowd’s disappointment, she failed to achieve anything more. The experienced and decorated Chinese claimed a confident win based on class and advanced to the final. Her opponent there was Min-Ah Ha from South Korea. She beat Tijana Bogdanovic (SRB) in the semifinal.

The winner-takes-it-all battle turned out less rich in points but no less dramatic.  The Chinese athlete was ahead for a long time, and only in the last seconds of the third round Min-Ah Ha managed to equalize. In the golden point round the South Korean was a bit more lucky.

The men’s competitions were just as spectacular. Another Russian athlete failed to advance to the final. Albert Gaun had an equal battle against Masoud Hajizavareh (IRI), and again, three rounds weren’t enough to determine the winner. The golden point in the extra round was scored by the Iranian. In the other pair, Nikita Rafalovich (UZB) defeated Ismael Coulibaly (MLI).

The final combat was controlled by the Iranian athlete. Masoud Hajizavareh managed to capitalize on the opponent’s mistakes. His two head kicks let him take a comfortable lead. Nikita Rafalovich risked it all and had a chance to equalize, but the Iranian fighter secured an overall victory to get career’s first world championship title.

Tomorrow, May 15, will see two more sets of medals contested, this time in men’s -68kg and women’s -67kg.