Cuban judoka Armenteros wins silver medal in Grand Prix of Dusseldorf

HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 22 (acn) José Armenteros (100 kg) won the silver medal in the in the last day of the Judo Grand Prix of Dusseldorf, Germany, and placed Cuba in 13th seat of a contest won by Japan with three gold and one silver medals.

The other Cubans who contributed points for this placement in the standings were Dayaris Mestres (48 kilos), who was bronze medalist, Alex Garcia (+100) finished fifth and Onix Cortés (70) was seventh.
Before losing in the final against German Dimitri Peters, Armenteros defeated British Benjamin Fletcher, Hungarian Miklos Cirjenics, Swedish Martin Peček, and Portuguese Jorge Fonseca, in that order.
Armenteros was winning his bout against the champion but lost by Ippon with two minutes and 59 seconds remaining.
On Sunday, Alex Garcia (+100) was close to the podium, but was defeated (2-3) in the bronze medal discussion by Hungarian Barna Bor to an overall balance of three wins and two losses.
The other Cuban in competition at the end of the tournament was Yalennis Castillo (78), but lost by Ippon on her second appearance to French Audrey Tcheumed.
Maricet Espinosa (63), Magdiel Estrada (73) and Ivan Silva (81) also concluded without medals in previous days of the event, in which Idalis Ortiz (+78) and Asley Gonzalez (90), the two main figures of Cuban judo nowadays, did not compete.
Japan (3-1-0) led the tournament, followed by South Korea (3-0-5), Germany ( 1-2-2), France (1-2-0), Slovenia (1-0-1), Sweden ( 1-0-0), Brazil (1-0-0), Austria (1-0-0), Ukraine (1-0-0) and Belgium (1-0-0), in that order, the 10 countries that were distributed the 14 titles in dispute.
This tourney in the city of Dusseldorf brought together 541 judokas -335 men and 206 women- from 86 nations.
This was the third and final stop of the disciples of Justo Noda (m) and Armando Padron (w) in their European tour, with the main objective to keep adding points for the world ranking towards the Olympics of Rio de Janeiro.
That select list distributes 22 and 14 direct tickets to the Olympics for men and women, respectively.
The other possibility of Cubans to get ranking points will be in Havana, venue next April of the Pan American Championships, event that will grant 400 units to the winners of each of the 14 Olympic divisions.