Olympics-Karate-Mid-bout injury ends German Horne's gold medal hopes
By Chang-Ran Kim
TOKYO, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Germany's gold-medal hopeful Jonathan Horne was eliminated from karate's "kumite" sparring contest on Saturday after a mid-bout injury to his right arm left him unable to rise from the tatami and he was carried away on a stretcher.
With some 20 seconds left in his match against Georgia's Gogita Arkania, Horne, the reigning world champion in the +84kg kumite event, collapsed onto the mat, writhing and screaming in agony as medics rushed to his side.
The nature of his injury was not immediately clear.
Horne's departure from the +75kg event saw Japan's Ryutaro Araga, who was due to fight the German next, advance to the semi-finals top of Pool A, followed by Turkey's Ugur Aktas.
The final day of karate's debut Olympics tournament kicked off earlier with the elimination of the fifth Japanese karate-ka on the women's side, leaving Araga as the last hope for home athletes to grab a medal in kumite.
In the women's +67kg weight class, Ayumi Uekusa went two-for-four in the elimination round to end her appearance at the Tokyo Olympics, for which she had put her plans to quit the sport on hold.
"I wanted to do my part, including for my coach, and become the champion but I failed and I'm so sorry," the 29-year-old told reporters, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"I had thrown so much of myself into these Olympics so right now I can't think about what I will do from here on."
Uekusa had an especially difficult run-up to the Olympics as she came under the media spotlight for blowing the whistle on years of bullying https://cn.reuters.com/article/olympics-2020-karate-idCNL5N2NR06N by a senior member of the Japan Karatedo Federation and his unsanctioned use of a bamboo stick during training that caused her a serious eye injury.
The official was later forced to resign.
The women's semi-finals match-ups will be between Azerbaijan's Iryna Zaretska and China's Gong Li, and Egypt's Feryal Abdelaziz and Kazakhstan's Sofya Berultseva.
In the solo "kata" category, where competitors are scored on defensive and offensive forms against a virtual opponent, Japan took a gold and a silver in the men's and women's events, respectively. (Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Toby Davis)
