Amandine Buchard in bronze, sixth medal for the French team

After her failure in the semi-final, the French judoka overcame her disappointment to win her third Olympic medal on Sunday, after a tough fight lasting more than seven minutes.

She came to seek gold at the Paris Olympic Games, but will have to settle for bronze. To take third place in the under 52 kg category, judoka Amandine Buchard won a long fight lasting more than seven minutes, Sunday July 28 in the Arena Champ-de-Mars in Paris. The PSG member managed to remobilize against the Hungarian Réka Pupp, after her defeat in the semi-finals.

The reigning Olympic vice-champion, the 29-year-old Frenchwoman came to Paris to achieve her “dream of being an Olympic champion”. Her morning had started well with two first victories but Amandine Buchard was unable to make the difference in the semi-final against the world number 1, who would end up winning gold. It must be said that the Uzbek Diyora Keldiyorova had been particularly impressive in this Olympic competition: to everyone’s surprise, she had knocked out the huge favourite in this category, the Japanese Uta Abe.

Injured in the lip, her head in her hands, Amandine Buchard seemed stunned by this defeat at the gates of the final, because the dream of fbetter than his silver medal won in Tokyo had flown away. “It was very, very hard for me to get over it,” she confided to France Télévisions. Amandine Buchard nevertheless succeeded, despite a fierce fight of more than seven minutes against the Hungarian. Offering France its sixth medal in this Olympiad, the French judoka let her tears flow on the tatami, symbolizing the tension accumulated in recent months.