Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong.
Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals.
Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32.
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He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock).
He then went toe-to-toe with Nurkanat Serikbayev of Kazakhstan, who last year ended Yang’s journey in the round of 16 at the World Judo Championships in Doha, Qatar.
With both judoka failing to best the other after the four-minute time limit, Yang and Serikbayev went into a sudden-death overtime. Yang came out on top.
The final was Yang and Nakamura’s third career encounter, with Nakamura winning the previous two at the Summer World University Games in Chengdu, China, last year and the Paris Grand Slam in February.
Yang fought to get the upper hand over Nakamura on Saturday, pushing their match into sudden-death overtime, but the Japanese judoka turned the bout around, taking the championship and leaving Yang with a silver medal.
Yang’s coach Liu Wen-teng said that it had been difficult to come up with a strategy against the 21-year-old Japanese because he had only emerged as a top competitor in the past two years.
Yang aims to accumulate ranking points to qualify for this year’s Summer Olympics in Paris at the Judo Grand Slam Astana in Kazakhstan and the World Judo Championships in Abu Dhabi.
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