Hosts Japan snatched double gold at the world judo championships Monday as Joshiro Maruyama and Uta Abe powered to victory to fire a warning ahead of next year\u2019s Tokyo Olympics.<\/p>\n
After failing to win a title on day one at the weekend, normal service was quickly resumed for the Japanese at the capital\u2019s iconic Budokan martial arts venue.<\/p>\n
World number two Maruyama produced a shock win over countryman and defending champion Hifumi Abe in the men\u2019s 66-kilogram division before battering South Korea\u2019s Kim Lim-hwan in a politically charged final.<\/p>\n
While Abe was denied a hat-trick of world titles, his younger sister Uta \u2014 the poster girl of Japanese judo \u2014 retained her crown in the women\u2019s 52-kilo class by dispatching Russian Natalia Kuziutina in just 28 seconds.<\/p>\n
Japan dominated the 2018 world championships in Baku, capturing eight of the 15 gold medals available, and will be chasing a similar haul at the 2020 Olympics on home soil.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a difficult road to come this far,\u201d said a tearful Maruyama after bagging his first world title. \u201cI\u2019ve struggled more than most fighters, so this is a big win for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hosts Japan snatched double gold at the world judo championships Monday as Joshiro Maruyama and Uta Abe powered to victory to fire a warning ahead of next year\u2019s Tokyo Olympics. After failing to win a title on day one at the weekend, normal service was quickly resumed for the Japanese at the capital\u2019s iconic Budokan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1461,31,17,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-news","category-sports","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8610,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608\/revisions\/8610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}