Soraya Haddad

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Soraya Haddad ( Arabic صورايا حداد, DMG Ṣūrāyā Ḥaddād ; * September 30, 1984 in El Kser, Bejaia Province ) is an Algerian judoka who won an Olympic medal in judo in 2008 as the first woman to compete for an African country.

Athletic career

The 1.55 m tall Soraya Haddad started until 2005 mostly in the ultra-light weight, the weight class up to 48 kilograms. At the African Championships in Cairo in 2002 she received a bronze medal. In 2004 she became the first African champion in Tunis. At the Olympic Games in Athens , she won her first two fights, but was defeated in the quarterfinals by the Japanese Ryōko Tani and was eliminated in the hope round. In 2005 she became African champion for the second time in Port Elizabeth. A month after the African Championships in Port Elizabeth, she won the Mediterranean Games in Almería . At the 2005 World Championships in Cairo, she lost to the Cuban Yanet Bermoy in the semifinals , and in the battle for the bronze medal she defeated the Belgian Ann Simons .

After switching to half-light weight, the weight class up to 52 kilograms, she won her first international medal at the 2007 African Games in Algiers when she was third. At the World Championships in Rio de Janeiro , she finished seventh. In 2008 she won her third Africa title in Agadir, the first in the light weight division. At the Olympic Games in Beijing she defeated Marie Muller from Luxembourg through Ippon in her first fight , in the round of 16 she defeated Hortance Diedhiou from Senegal in a fight over the full time. The quarter-finals against South Korean Kim Kyung-ok ended four seconds before Ippon's regular time for Haddad was up. In the semi-finals she lost to the Chinese Xian Dongmei after 1:21 minutes . In the fight for a bronze medal, she defeated the Kazakh Sholpan Kalijewa after the full fight time of five minutes.

After a year off, Haddad returned in 2010. In 2011, in Dakar, she won her fourth African Championship. Four and a half months later, she won the 2011 African Games in Maputo . In 2012 she won the fifth Africa title of her career in Agadir. At the Olympic Games in London , she was eliminated in her first fight against the Romanian Andreea Chițu .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Match balance at judoinside.com
  2. ↑ Soraya Haddad in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
personal data
SURNAME Haddad, Soraya
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Algerian judoka
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1984
PLACE OF BIRTH El Kser, Bejaia Province