TEAM GB and NI won its first medal of the Tokyo Olympic when Chelsie Giles beat Switzerland’s Fabienne Kocher to clinch the bronze medal in the women’s judo -52kg event.
The team also gained its first men’s medal, a silver, after a brilliant last round gave Bradly Sinden victory over Zhao Shuai of China in the semi-finals of men’s taekwondo -68 kg category. That put him into the final but the 22-year-old from Doncaster had to settle for silver as a close and exciting contest went to the wire, Uzbekistan's Ulugbek Rashitov, the rising star of the sport at just 19, showing greater flexibility and snatching a 34-29 victory in the dying seconds.
Rashitov had beaten the world number one earlier in the tournament and thoroughly deserved the gold medal. Sinden said: "I thought he was on the back foot, you have to commend him for what he did - a few mistakes from me, well done to him, you'll see me again in Paris.
"Maybe eventually I'll be proud but we were here to get gold, anything else is not what we're here to celebrate - maybe eventually I will get over it, but for now it has got me that I didn't win gold when I think it was there for me to take. I will take that and improve on it."
Chelsie Giles, 24, from Coventry had ualifiedd for the bronze medal match via a repechage and took her medal opportunity early, thowing her opponent to score a match-winning ippon.
Sinden’s silver performance made up for the shock defeat of double Olympic taekwondo champion and tournament favourite Jade Jones.
Jones, the -57kg gold medallist in both London and Rio, was beaten 12-16 by Kimia Alizadeh of the Refugee team. The Iranian born Alizadeh had beaten Jones twice before in world championships but Jones was expected to beat her and go all the way to the final. She said afterwards that he put "too much pressure" on herself.
Elsewhere in the Games, Austria's Anna Kiesenhofer sealed a shock women's cycling road race gold. Lizzie Deignan of Tewam GB & NI could finish only 11th.
There was joy for the host nation when judoka Uta Abe triumphed in the women's -52kg category in Tokyo, hours before her brother Hifumi took gold in the men's -66kg final, making Olympic history as the first siblings to win gold medals on the same day.
Since Alizadeh was beaten herself in the next round, Jones was unable to go into a repechage bout and thus exited the Olympics.
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