In the 78kg Gategory of Women’s leg of Ulaanbaatar Grand Prix 2016, Purevjargal Lkhamdegd warmed up for the Olympics with a confident display in her homeland today. She faced Junior World Championships winner Brigita Matic of Croatia in the final and bullied the Croatian in ne-waza and tachi-waza before inevitably taking the lead with a waza-ari from an ouchi-gari.
The Mongolian Judoka was relentless in her pursuit of gold as she bettered a mismatched Matic by ippon. The Croatian team will, however, be delighted with their haul of three medals from as many judoka. Purevjargal only qualified for the Olympic Games by continental quota allocation but could prove to be a spoiler against the top seeds.
In her first semi-final Munkh-Erdene Uuganjargal of Mongolia had lost to teammate Purevjargal by wazari-awasette-ippon. Olympian Purevjargal opened the scoring with a waza-ari before determining which Mongolian judoka would represent the hosts in the final as the former held down her teammate for 15 seconds. Matic defeated Rome European Open bronze medalist Park Yujin of Korea after a scoreless four minutes ended with the Croatian advancing in the other Semi-final.
The first bronze medal was won by Park Yujin