December 7, 2019 – Matea Jelic (67 kg, Marjan) and Kristina Tomic (49 kg, Osvit) could be joined by Toni Kanaet (80 kg, Marjan) at the Olympic Games next summer.
Namely, T.portal writes that Split taekwondo club member Marjan Matea Jelic will perform at the Tokyo Olympics next year! This is thanks to Matea’s incredible result at the final Grand Prix in Moscow, with only 16 of the best competing in each Olympic category.
Matea won the silver medal in the 67-kg category with an incredible 48 points to jump into third place in the Olympic rankings.
In the first round, she celebrated at the last second against the unfavorable Kazakhstanski athlete Nigora Tursunkulova 10:8, in the quarterfinals she beat three-time European champion, Lauren Wiliams, with a score of 34:32, while in the semifinals she was better than French athlete Magda Wiet Henin 8:7, who has won three European and one world championship medal.
In the final match, Matea lost 14:15 to Ruth Gbagbi, world champion and bronze medalist at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.
After an unfortunate defeat at the last second of the fight for a medal at the World Cup in Manchester, Matea Jelic achieved a fantastic series of top results – the gold at the Grand Prix in Rome, silver at the Grand Prix in Chiba, bronze at the European Championship in Bari and as the icing on the cake, the silver in the Grand Prix final.
Jelic thus continued the series of placement at the Olympic Games for the Split taekwondo club Marjan, after Ana and Lucia Zaninovic in 2012 in London and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.
Although Kristina Tomic (49 kg) lost in the second round to Serbian Tiana Bogdanovic, also secured her spot in Tokyo thanks to her total points and victory in the first round against Zeliha Agris (22:14).
Finally, the European champion, Toni Kanaet, who is in the last (sixth) place to get a visa for the Olympics, is just one step away from the same success as Jelic and Tomic. However, for him to secure a spot in Tokyo, his Korean competitor must not be the winner of the Grand Slam series.
To read more about sport in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page.
