End of the road for Sekamana

Judo round of 32 Mendoca bts Sekamana 100-000 OEJRWANDA started the London Olympic Games on a poor note when hopeful Yannick Uwase Sekamana was knocked out in the preliminary round of the Judo competition yesterday in North Arena 2 stadium.The 18-year old lost the contest to Brazilian Brundo Mendoca, 27, inside 54 seconds after the 12th ranked athlete used Okuri-Eri-Jime (OEJ) technique to knock out his Rwandan opponent in less than a minute.Okuri-Eri-Jime is one of the twelve constriction techniques of Kodokan Judo in the Shime-Waza list. It (OEJ) means the sliding collar strangle.Sekamana, who was making his Olympics debut, was Rwanda’s first competitor in action at the London Games and the first to go without giving a fight as the country bids to win its first Olympic medal.Mendoca held with the hand around Sekamana’s neck and pulled across and the other hand pulled the collar downwards leaving referee Hassine Noureddine with no choice but to stop the contest before the worst could happen to the Rwandan fighter.The judging pair of Cortes Jose Manuel and Osako Akinobu awarded the Brazilian winning point of IPO (100-000) for executing perfectly in the sparring competition.Mendoca will face the winner between France’s Legrand Ugo and Hafiz Hussein of Egypt in the quarter finals.Afterwards Sekamana said, “I lost to an experienced competitor but I think this was good for my career because I have gained some experience and hope to be much stronger in the next competitions.”“I won’t give up but I will go back to France and double my efforts after the Olympics,” added the France-based fighter yesterday in a telephone interview from London.Rwanda’s next charge for the medal hunt will be on Thursday when two-time Olympian Jackson Niyomugabo takes to the pool in the 50-metres freestyle preliminaries at the Aquatics centre.Niyomugabo is confident on improving his Beijing Games performance where he failed to go past the preliminaries, and four years later, is hoping for a better showing.“I want to do better this time. And why not? After all the things that have happened to me anything is possible,” Niyomugabo said recently.He will take the pool against swimmers from Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, American Samoa, Cameroon and Djibouti, and will have to improve drastically on his time to progress to the semifinals.His female counterpart, 16-year-old Alphonsine Agahozo, is also set to compete in the women’s 50-meter freestyle on Friday.Runners Robert Kajuga will compete in 10000m men’s final on August 4; Mukasakindi will participate in the 10,000m women’s final on August 5 while Jean Pierre Mvuyekure and Adrien Niyonshuti will complete the competition schedules for Rwanda on August 12 competing in full marathon and mountain bike, respectively.

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End of the road for Sekamana