Glasgow: India’s judokas guaranteed the country at least three silver medals at the Commonwealth Games as Asmita Dey, Harsh Singh and Yamini Mourya stormed into the finals of their respective weight categories here on Friday.
Young Asmita fought valiantly to snatch the win from the jaws of defeat, beating Scotland’s Summer Shaw by yuko to progress to the women’s 48kg final where she will meet Canada’s Heidi Quach later in the day.
She had earlier sailed into the semifinals with an easy win over Scotland’s Eva Ewing, defeating her via ippon.
An ippon is the highest possible score in judo. It means a full point, and ends the match right away, while yuko is a lower-level scoring value in judo that was reinstated by the International Judo Federation (IJF) for the LA 2028 Olympic cycle.
Harsh then edged past Australia’s Pedro Carlos Antun Neto via waza-ari to progress to the final. He had earlier defeated Chikondi Kathewera of Malawi via ippon to sail into the men’s 60kg quarterfinals, where he beat Vanuatu’s Alan Monthouel to make it to the last four-round.
Harsh will take on another Australian in Joshua Katz in the final later tonight.
A waza-ari in judo is the second-highest score a fighter can achieve, worth a major advantage. It is awarded for a throw that lacks one element of an ippon or a ground hold lasting 10 to 19 seconds. Two waza-aris is equal to an ippon, which immediately results into a win.
A dominant Yamini hardly broke her sweat to get past South Africa’s Donne Breytenbach by ippon to enter the title clash, where she will be up against England’s Acelya Toprak. She earlier beat Ghana’s Frema Agyei to progress to semifinals.
In women’s 52kg category, Shraddha Kadubal Chopade couldn’t progress to the medal round after losing to Lola Hodson of Wales via yuko in the repechage. She had earlier defeated Sierra Leone’s Jane Massaquoi by ippon before losing Australia’s Tinka Easton.
Rohit Basir Majgul also crashed out in the men’s 66kg repechage after losing by yuko against Michael Fryer of England. The Indian had earlier defeated Mozambique’s Samuel Ribeiro before losing to Cyprus’ Petros Christodoulides in the quarterfinals.