Ana Laura Portuondo-Isasi Wins Canada’s Third Bronze in Judo

In the third day of competition, in a venue which has become known for its demonstration of Scottish pride over the past few days, Ana Laura Portuondo-Isasi (78kg),started her day by winning her quarter-final bout against Jina Devi Chongtham of India to move into the semi-finals. In the semi-finals against Nathalie Powell, the judo athlete from La Prairie Quebec was beaten by the Wales athlete. Fighting in the bronze final Portuondo-Isasi was defeated Brigitte Rose from Seychelles to claim the bronze. Although pleased with her bronze medal, she was not content with her overall performance.

“I am not entirely satisfied with my day,” said Portuondo Isasi. “I am going to work hard, I am going to work on it and I’ll do better next time.”

Only yesterday, Alix Renaud-Roy and Jonah Burt both won their bronze medal bouts to guarantee medals, but the athletes as well as Judo Canada were honest about the young team not living up to the full opportunity. Team Manager Ewan Beaton spoke about the longer term goals.

“Our objective was to expose our young U-18, U-23s to an Olympic-type environment and these Commonwealth Games have provided that,” said Beaton. “Our goal was to win a few more medals, but most of our young talent were in medal matches and that was really important to us, but they are a very young team and our longer-term goal is for gold medals in 2020. This is hopefully the road and the start of an adventure for these young kids.”

Portuondo-Isasi, who is coached by Faycal Bousbiat in Boucherville, has set goals for herself including medaling at the next World Junior Championships.

Other Canadian Judo athletes included Martin Rygielski of St. Clements Ontario in the over 100kg weight-class who did not win his preliminary bouts, as well as Sophie Vaillancourt (Wotton, QC) in the 78kg weight-class, who did not progress out of the preliminaries.