Spain’s Sandra Sanchez Jaime won the first-ever Olympic Games karate gold medal in Tokyo on Thursday, becoming her country’s oldest ever Olympian at 39 years and 323 days.
She ensured her name would be in the sport’s history books by beating Japan’s Kiyou Shimizu in the women’s kata final.
Sanchez Jaime, 39, took the historic title with a higher athletic score than the home favourite and two-time former world champion Shimizu after the two karatekas were all square on 19.60 on the technical score.
“It is crazy. I am so emotional, I am feeling so many things together. I am happy, but I want to cry,” she said.
Bronze medals went to Italian Viviana Bottaro and Mo Sheung Grace Lau from Hong Kong.
Later on Thursday France’s Steven Da Costa beat Turkey’s Eray Samdan in the men’s-67kg kumite final.
Da Costa, whose twin brother, older brother and father are all in the family karate ‘business’, was adding this to his 2018 World championship gold.
In the last final of the night, Ivet Goranova of Bulgaria beat Ukraine’s Anzhelika Terliuga to claim women’s-55kg kumite gold.
