{"id":13806,"date":"2012-08-07T19:08:51","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T19:08:51","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-08-07T19:08:51","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T19:08:51","slug":"Japanese-Obara-wins-women-s-freestyle-wrestling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=13806","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Obara wins women’s freestyle wrestling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan’s Hitomi Obara justified her decision to come out of retirement by winning the women’s 48kg freestyle wrestling gold in her first Olympic Games at London’s Excel Arena.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obara, who under her maiden name of Sakamoto won seven world titles in the non-Olympic 51kg class, defeated Azerbaijan’s Mariya Stadnyk 3-1 in a repeat of last year’s world championship final in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

Stadnyk won the opening period convincingly but the 31-year-old Obara stormed back into the contest with several well-judged takedowns and, after her referee raised her arm to confirm her victory, dissolved in floods of tears.<\/p>\n

Canada’s Carol Huynh, the 2008 Beijing champion who lost to Obara in the semi-finals, took an early lead in her bronze medal bout when, after the opening period ended scoreless, Senegal’s Isabelle Sambou drew a blue ball – the colour of Huynh’s singlet.<\/p>\n

That gave Huynh the right to mount the first leg-grab attack in the 30 seconds of extra-time and she duly scored.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second two minute period also ended without any points and this time Huynh drew a blue ball and again made the most of her good fortune to secure a bronze medal.<\/p>\n

In the other bronze bout, Clarissa Chun of the United States produced a takedown with a couple of seconds remaining in the opening period to go 1-0 up against Irini Merleni of Ukraine, the inaugural 2004 Athens Games champion and Beijing bronze medallist.
\n<\/strong>
\nMerleni attacked hard in the second period but Chun’s hip-toss extended her lead and she took the bout 3-0.<\/p>\n

Merleni was applauded off the mat by Ukraine sporting great and former Olympic pole vault champion Sergei Bubka.<\/p>\n

Japan will have a chance to make it two golds out of two on the opening day of women’s wrestling action when two-time champion Kaori Icho faces China’s Jing Ruixue in the 63kg final.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What a sport!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source AP<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Japan’s Hitomi Obara justified her decision to come out of retirement by winning the women’s 48kg freestyle wrestling gold in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"1","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Japan’s Hitomi Obara justified her decision to come out of retirement by winning the women’s 48kg freestyle wrestling gold in","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":148,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":1,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}