Majlinda Kelmendi put Kosovo on the medal board for the first time in its history on Sunday (7 August), after winning gold in the women’s judo -52kg weight class. Kelmendi was guaranteed a silver medal when she beat Misato Nakamura of Japan in the semi-finals.
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The top-ranked Kelmendi, the young country’s best-known athlete, was the favorite heading into the competition. That set up a Gold Medal Match with Italy’s Odette Giuffrida.
In her first match of the day Saturday morning, Kelmendi delivered an ippon 25 seconds into a Round of 16 match vs. Switzerland’s Evelyne Tschopp, then exploded with excitement immediately afterward. Wearing a blue uniform – one that matched some of the Kosovo flags being waved in the arena – a teary Kelmendi waved to the crowd and raised her arms.
The 24-year-old Kelmendi is also a former world champion and was her country’s flagbearer when the eight-member Kosovo team walked in the opening ceremony.
The Rio games are the first in which athletes from Kosovo have been allowed to compete under their own flag.
Also on August 7, the second day of the 2016 games, Vitalina Batsarashkina won silver for Russian Federation in the women’s 10-meter air pistol event, beaten out by Zhang Mengxue who secured China’s first gold for this year’s games. Baul had been dominant in his earlier matches.
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Kelmendi competed for Albania at the 2012 Games in London and coincidentally won her first world title in Rio in 2013, with a single yuko enough to seal her historic victory against Giuffrida on this occasion.
