International Karate Tournament In Sarawak

First International Karate Tournament in Kuching, Sarawak held at Close Stadium Petra Jaya

Jordan on winning path MOHAMMAD Alrifi won the first gold medal in the 18th Kobe Osaka International (KOI) World Cup yesterday to give Jordan a winning start to the competition at State Indoor Stadium here.

Alrifi scooped the gold after defeating Askanas Megrabyan of Russia 5-2 in the final of the men’s Special Individual Kumite (age 18-20).
In the first round, Alrifi blanked Fahad Al Rashidi 4-0, edged Malaysia’s Nagatheeban Govind 4-3 in the second round and went on to beat Lee Chun Ho of Hong Kong 5-1 in the semi-final.
Jordan bagged another medal through Bashar Alnajjer who beat compatriot Ahmed Khalifieh for the bronze in the repecharge round.
The other bronze in this category went to Nagatheeban who overcame Al Rashidi and Lee in the repecharge round.

Nagatheeban started well in the first round by outpointing Vietnamese Dat Vie 12-3 but fell 3-4 to Alrifi in the next round. In the women’s Special Individual Kumite, defending champion Anna Savitskaya from Russia had an easier time retaining her title she won at last year’s tournament in Latina, Italy.She only had to contend with two opponents - compatriot Ksenia Emelyanenko and Hoa Luu Thi Thuy from Vietnam. The fourth competitor Ahdyeh of Iran did not show up.
The matches were contested on a round robin format where each exponent was involved in two bouts with the one with the most points as the winner.

In the first match, Hoa triumphed 4-1 over Emelyanenko, the Cadet Individual Kumite (age 14-15) gold medallist in last year’s 17th edition.Emelyanenko suffered a second 1-5 loss to Savitskaya.In the deciding match, Savitskaya defeated Hoa 6-5.The score was tied at 3-3 after full-time of three minutes and again level at 2-2 in extra-time of one minute but the referees ruled 3-2 in Savitskaya’s favour.

Only two categories were contested yesterday, more as a test of the new scoring system and the capabilities of the referees. After the first day, Russia are leading with one gold, one silver and one bronze, followed by Jordan with one gold and one bronze and Vietnam with one silver.
Hosts Malaysia are fourth with a bronze.