HANGZHOU, China — The Philippine Judo Federation vows to bounce back following its disappointing performance in the 19th Asian Games here.
Despite the presence of Olympian Kiyomi Watanabe, the national judokas will still go home empty handed after failing to make it past the quarterfinals of their respective categories.
Watanabe, a Filipino-Japanese who nearly pulled an upset in the gold medal match of the Jakarta Asian Games in 2018, started hot as she beat her Vietnamese foe in the Round of 16 but fell prey to the Japanese top seed in the quarterfinals of the women’s -63-kilogram category.
On the other hand, Dylwynn Gimena and Carl Dave Aseneta closed their campaign in the individual events with lopsided losses in the women’s -78-kg class and men’s -100-kg category, respectively.
The 27-year-old Gimena fell prey to Khuslen Otgonbayar of Mongolia via ippon in the Round of 16 while the 26-year-old Aseneta surrendered to Won Jonghoon of South Korea also via ippon in the Round of 16.
“I don’t want to comment about their performance because we’re not the one competing,” said Carter, who used to head the national judo federation.
“But we can’t say anything bad about their performance. We just have to sit down and evaluate to determine what went wrong.”
Also going home without individual medals are Leah Jhane Lopez (women’s -48-kg), Shugen Nakano (men’s -66-kg), Rena Furukawa (women’s 57-kg), John Viron Ferrer (men’s -80-kg), Ryoko Salinas (women’s -70-kg) and Kyodo Nakano (men’s -73-kg).
