SALLY CONWAY moved a step closer to qualification for the Tokyo Olympics with victory at the Tel Aviv Grand Prix in Israel.
Conway, the world number seven, showed her class to win her group by defeating Elisavet Teltsidou from Greece, Alena Prokopenko from Russia and and Kelita Zupancic Canada to set up a semi-final against talented Spanish youngster Ai Tsunoda Roustant.
Despite Conway’s status as favourite, victory over Tsunoda Rousant was not a foregone conclusion as last year, the Spaniard became World Cadet, European Cadet and European Youth Olympic Festival champion, in addition to claiming silver at the European Junior Championships.
However, the Scot’s experience showed as she defeated Tsunoda Roustant by waza ari awasete ippon to set up a final against former World Championship bronze medallist Seongyeon Kim of Korea.
Conway dominated the final against her Korean opponent, who was ranked 33rd in the world, before throwing Kim for ippon using a Ashi-waza combination to take gold.
With only a few months of Olympic qualification remaining, Conway is almost assured of her place in the British team for Tokyo, where she will be hoping to do even better than the bronze medal she won in Rio in 2016.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here