Osaka Grand Slam Preview

This weekend sees Osaka play host to the final IJF Grand Slam of the season at the Maruzen Intec Arena.

Following the recent World Championships in Tokyo and the race for a higher position in the point based ranking system, three British Judoka will return to the home of judo searching for valuable Olympic qualification points.

Competition starts on Friday 22^nd and runs till Sunday 24^th. Saturday sees the trio of British athletes competing.

At her last competition in September, Lucy Renshall (63kg) claimed bronze at the Tashkent Grand Prix. Renshall makes her Osaka Grand Slam debut but does have two silver medals from previous Grand Slams, the most recent coming in May this year in Ekaterinburg.

Renshall has been drawn in Pool A and will face the 2019 Hohhot Grand Prix silver medallist Jing Tang (CHN) in the opening round.

2019 European Games silver medallist, Alice Schlesinger (-63kg), recently claimed bronze at the Perth Oceania Open. Schlesinger has competed twice at the Tokyo Grand Slam, finishing 7^th on both occasions. She will be hoping to recapture the form that saw win two gold medals at the Baku Grand Slams in 2016 and 2017.

Schlesinger has been drawn in Pool D and will face the 2019 Tashkent Grand Prix silver medallist Anriquelis Barrios (VEN) in the opening round.

Gemma Howell (-70kg) has claimed two Grand Slam bronze medals this year, in Baku and Brasilia, in addition to two gold medals at the Budapest and Zagreb Grand Prix’s. Howell enters the competition as the 6^th seed and has been drawn in Pool D with a first-round match against Mariya Takahashi (PHI)

Preliminary Round coverage is due to start at 01:50am (GMT), with Final Block scheduled to start at 08:00am GMT*. You can watch all the action live on the British Judo homepage.

*Please note timings may be subject to change by the hosts