Karate injury in mid-fight ends German Horne’s gold medal hopes

TOKYO, Aug. 7 (Reuters) – Germany’s gold medal hopeful Jonathan Horne was knocked out of the karate “kumite” bout on Saturday after a mid-bout injury to his right arm was made him unable to get up from the tatami mat and he was carried away by a stretcher.

With around 20 seconds left in his match against Georgian Gogita Arkania, Horne, the reigning world champion of the +84 kg kumite event, collapsed on the mat, writhing and screaming in pain as the doctors rushed to his side.

The nature of his injury was not immediately clear.

Horne’s start of the +75 kg event saw Ryutaro Araga of Japan, who was to take on the German, to take the lead in the semi-finals of Pool A, followed by Turkish Ugur Aktas.

The final day of the first Olympic karate tournament kicked off earlier with the elimination of Japanese fifth karate-ka from the women’s side, leaving Araga as the last hope for local athletes to win a medal in kumite.

In the women’s +67 kg category, Ayumi Uekusa rose to two against four in the knockout round to end her participation in the Tokyo Olympics, for which she had suspended her plan to quit the sport.

“I wanted to do my part, including for my coach, and become the champion but I failed and I’m so sorry,” the 29-year-old told reporters, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I had invested so much of myself in these Olympics that at the moment I cannot think about what to do from now on.”

Uekusa had a particularly difficult preparation for the Olympics as she was in the media spotlight for exposing years of bullying by a senior member of the Japan Karate Federation and her unauthorized use of a bamboo stick during the training that caused him a serious eye injury.

The official was then forced to resign.

The women’s semi-finals will oppose Azerbaijani Iryna Zaretska and Chinese Gong Li, Egyptian Feryal Abdelaziz and Kazakhe Sofya Berultseva.

In the solo “kata” category, where contestants are scored on defensive and offensive forms against a virtual opponent, Japan won a gold and a silver in the men’s and women’s events, respectively.

Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Toby Davis

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