The 2007 Beijing Judo Open have ended up Friday with gold medals in dispute went to the big names participating here at the "Good Luck Beijing" Olympic test event.

 

Asian champion Yoshie Ueno choked Chinese judoka Yan Xuelan, former Universiade champion in 2002, to take the women's 63kg title with a breezy ippon win.

 

The 24-year-old, a younger sister of Athens Olympic champion Masae Ueno in the women's 70kg category, claimed a gold medal at last May's Asian Championships at Kuwait City in the same class, piling up her winning streak in the continental tournament to three in a row.

 

On the men's part, Italy's national champion Antonio Ciano denied a late comeback from Japanese judoka Ono Takashi to win the men's 81kg final with a waza-ari.

 

Earlier in the evening, two judokas from China failed their third-place matches and saw the bronze medals go to Russian Yury Panasenkov and Aea Min Sun of South Korea, both with ippon wins.

 

The other two title of the 2007 Beijing Judo Open were won by Russian Alim Gadanov and Frenchwoman Caroline Lantoine on Thursday.

 

In the men's under-66kg final, judo world's nobody Gadanov took a coup to upset Olympic gold medalist Masato Uchishiba of Japan with a yuko, while Europe's promising judoka Lantoine took only 39 seconds to beat this year's Pan American Games silver medalist Erika Miranda of Brazil with an ippon for the women's 52kg title.

 

Xiao Jun, last year's Chinese national judo championships winner of the women's 48kg category, settled for a bronze medal in the women's half-lightweight event, and her compatriot Liu Changchun won the third-place match with an ippon in the men's half-lightweight category.

 

Pushing aside the unsatisfactory results from the Chinese judokas, the organizing jobs done for the test event have drawn good comments from all sides.

 

"Up to now the echos for the tournament are positive," said Quan Liangzhu, the executive chairman of the tournament's organizing committee.

 

"Both the international judo federation and national administrative center of the sport speak highly of the event."

 

"We have completed the task of test the venue ahead of the judo competitions of next year's Beijing Olympic Games," he added. "All the operating systems function well. The competition serves including the volunteer serves received good comment. So that we can have confidence in holding next year's Olympic judo event."

 

The tournament, slated for November 15-16, went on at the Beijing Science and Technology University Gymnasium, where to hold the judo competitions of the 29th Olympic Games in 2008 as well as the Olympic taekwondo event and the wheelchair Basketball and wheelchair Rugby events at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2007)