Priscilla Gagné loses Para judo bronze medal by penalty

PARIS – After almost three minutes of overtime, Priscilla Gagné loses bronze medal parajudo women’s -57kg J1 match to Paula Gomez of Argentina.

The Canadian struggled to complete her attacks and received multiple shido violations in the overtime minutes. The match ended when Gagné incurred a Hansoku-make violation for performing an attack without having a solid grip on her opponent.

Gagné scored the first point going up early over Gomez, but the Argentinian quickly recovered with one of her own.

It was an evenly matched fight as Gagné dominated Gomez at several moments, but could not get two hands on in most of her attacks, and thus they didn’t warrant a score.

“I thought I threw her. This happened three times. I thought it was over. And I was really confused because I thought I scored and then I didn’t,” Gagne said.

After five minutes of play, the match entered overtime, which is governed by the golden score rule, meaning the next judoka to score would win.

Gomez captured the win almost three minutes into overtime.

“I’m proud that I made it here after three years of difficult training. And that I, that I showed up and motivated and excited and happy. And I’m very proud that I didn’t give up,” Gagne said.

Gagné started her tournament off strong with a decisive 10-0 victory in the opening round against Brazil’s Larissa Oliveira. She used the Okuri-eri-jime choke and needed just over a minute to complete her victory.

From there she moved to the semi-final round and faced Shi Yijie of China who is ranked first in the world. Here, she met the same fate she dealt Oliveira, losing 10-0.

In the Paralympic Games, two bronze medals are awarded because the tournament includes repechage rounds. The semi-final losers then play the top two repechage round finishers and the victors of each of these two matches receive a bronze medal.

Gagne is a three-time Paralympian from Sarnia (Ontario). She captured silver at Tokyo 2020 in the women’s 52kg division.

The 38-year-old  started competing in 2010, and since has been a leader within the Para Judo community, especially as the sport has started growing rapidly in recent years.

In Tokyo all judokas were lumped into the same classification, regardless of the level of vision impairment they experienced. This meant Gagné competed against athletes experiencing partial vision impairment while she herself experiences more complete vision impairment. Even so, she earned silver at those Paralympic Games.

Now in Paris, there are two classifications of impairment — J1 and J2 — so Para athletes are competing against opponents with more similar levels of impairment.

This new classification demonstrates the extent to which this sport has grown, and the impressive competition Gagné overcame for her result.