Yoko Sakue ( Japanese 坂 上 洋子 ; August 29, 1968 , Nagasaki ) - Japanese heavyweight judoka , played for the Japanese national team in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. The bronze medalist of the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, the silver and double bronze medalist of the Asian Championships, the winner of many tournaments of national and international importance.
| Yoko sakue | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| general information | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Citizenship |  Japan | |||||||||||||||||||
| Date of Birth | August 29, 1968 (aged 50) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Place of Birth | Nagasaki , Japan | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Growth | 163 cm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Weight category | heavy (95 kg) | |||||||||||||||||||
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Biography
Yoko Sakue was born on August 29, 1968 in the city of Nagasaki of the prefecture of the same name. She began to actively engage in judo in early childhood while studying in elementary school, and later continued her studies in high school and then at Tsukuba University [1] .
The first serious success at the adult international level was in 1985, when she joined the main team of the Japanese national team and attended the Asian home women's championship in Tokyo, where she brought silver and bronze dignity awards, won in the heavy and absolute weight categories, respectively - in both cases was defeated by Chinese woman Gao Fenglian . Two years later, she performed at the World Championships in Essen, Germany, but failed to get into the number of winners, at the stage of 1/16 final she was defeated by the American Margaret Castro . A year later, she added a bronze medal to her track record, won in the absolute weight category at the Asian Championship in Damascus.
In 1989, at the World Championships in Yugoslav Belgrade, Sakaue was again left without medals, this time in the 1/16 finals she lost to Bulgarian representative Tsvetana Tomova . The following season, she received bronze in the heavyweight at the World Cup in Paris and in the open weight at the Fukuoka international home tournament. In 1992, she won bronze at the World Cup in Paris, losing only to the Cuban Estelle Rodriguez , and thanks to a series of successful performances she was awarded the right to defend the country's honor at the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona . She took the upper hand over the first three rivals here, but at the semi-finals she was defeated by Chinese woman Zhuang Xiaoyan , who eventually won the Olympics in the heavyweight division. For all that, in the consolation match for the third place, the Polish athlete Beata Maximova won and thereby won the bronze Olympic medal.
Soon after the end of these competitions, Yoko Sakue decided to end the career of a professional athlete, losing her place in the national team to young Japanese judokas, although she continued to take part in amateur and veteran judo tournaments for many years. She is a radio amateur , a mother of two children [1] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 ｢CLOSEUP MEDALISTS 坂 上 洋子｣ 近代 柔道 ベ ー ス ボ ー ル マ ガ ジ ン 社 、 1992 年 12 月 号 、 18-19 頁
Links
- Yoko Sakue - Olympic statistics at Sports-Reference.com
- Yoko Sakaue - profile on judoinside.com