Kelita Zupancic

Kelita Zupancic (born May 9, 1990 in Whitby , Ontario ) is a Canadian judoka .

Athletic career

The 1.69 m tall Kelita Zupancic competes in the middleweight division, the weight class up to 70 kilograms. In 2007 she won her first Canadian championship. In 2009 she won a bronze medal at the Pan-American Championships, and in 2010 she was the first Pan-American champion. In 2011 she won bronze again. At the Pan American Games in 2011 , she finished fifth. In early 2012, she again won bronze at the Pan-American championships. At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, she lost to the French Lucie Décosse in her opening match .

At the beginning of 2013, Zupancic reached the finals at the Grand Slam in Paris and finished second behind the Dutchwoman Kim Polling . Two months later she won the Pan-American Championships for the second time, and the following year she lost to the Colombian Yuri Alvear in the final . In 2015, Kelita Zupancic won the final against Yuri Alvear. At the Pan American Games in Toronto in 2015 , Zupancic won the final against the Cuban Onix Cortés . In 2016, Zupancic lost to Yuri Alvear in the final of the Pan American Championships. At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Zupancic won her opening match against the Georgian Esther Stam . In the quarterfinals she was defeated by the Japanese Haruka Tachimoto , after her defeat in the hoping round against Bernadette Graf from Austria, the Canadian took seventh place.

In 2017, Zupancic lost to the Japanese Chizuru Arai in the final of the Grand Slam tournament in Paris . At the Pan American Championships in 2017 she lost the final again to Yuri Alvear, and in 2018 and 2019 she received bronze. In between, she reached seventh place at the 2018 World Championships .

Web links

• Tournament results on judoinside.com
• Kelita Zupancic in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )

Footnotes

1. ↑ Pan American Championships 2014 at judoinside.com