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Kearney and Shugen Wu. INPHO/Dan Sheridan
Disappointment

Kearney loses out on 'golden score'

The Belfast judoka was beaten in sudden death this afternoon.

Updated 17.00

LISA KEARNEY BOWED out of the London Olympics after losing to Shugen Wu of China this afternoon.

The 23-year-old Belfast competitor, ranked 19th and Ireland’s first ever female representative in the women’s judo, was in action against the world number nine in the last 16 of the event.

Kearney was 1-0 down but brilliantly levelled the score up with seconds remaining before losing out on a ‘golden score’ in sudden death after her opponent produced an Ippon – a clean throw which ends the fight.

“It was a pretty close fight, there wasn’t much in it,”  she told Will Downing afterwards.

When it went into golden score, I felt like I had started to gain some momentum and started to build pressure but unfortunately I just got caught. That’s judo, it only takes one second to either throw or be thrown.She’s quite a defensive sort of player so she’s very difficult to throw. I felt like I did need to be aggressive and maybe build pressure and get her penalised.

Despite her disappointment, Kearney said that there was plenty to take heart from.

“It was a really close contest. There’s not much between any of the athletes here today. I’m really disappointed to have lost of course but there’s a lot of good things I can take from my performance today and that I can go away and work on for the future.

“I think the whole experience will be a massive benefit to me and I’ll be able to build on this for my future.”

– Additional reporting by Niall Kelly

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