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By Barnaby Chesterman



France went some way to erasing the painful memories of a disappointing Olympic Games in Athens by lifting both the men’s and women’s European Team Championships in Paris. The hosts, who qualified automatically for the four-team competition, maintained their excellent record in the tournament by claiming a men’s and women’s double for the third time in eight years.



The women’s team were totally dominant, beating Spain 6-0 in the semi-final and then brushing Great Britain aside in the final 6-1. Spain took the bronze medal by edging out Italy in the third/fourth place match. In the men’s competition, France knocked out Italy in the semi-final and faced Spain, who beat Turkey, in the final. The result never looked in doubt after France stormed into a 3-0 lead.



Cyrille Soyer beat Keiji Uematsu at under 60kg after the Spaniard suffered an injury. Ahmed Ould Said then dumped Javier Delgado for ippon with a spectacular te-guruma in the under 66kg division. Spain were in desperate trouble and things got even worse when Daniel Fernandes turned over European champion Kiyoshi Uematsu for ippon in the under 73kg category. Oscar Fernandez stopped the rot by snatching a draw against Anthony Rodriguez at under 81kg but ironically, France clinched the gold medal by losing the under 90kg bout.



Spain needed three ippon victories from the last three categories to force a draw and a fight-off but 1996 world junior champion David Alarza could only beat 2001 world champion Frederic Demontfaucon by waza-ari and the title was France’s. Ghislain Lemairre and Mathieu Battaille won their bouts to put a gloss on the final score, France winning 5-1.


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