Yuri Alvear

Yuri Alvear shows her 2012 Olympic medal in Cali

Yuri Alvear Orjuela (born March 29, 1986 in Jamundí ) is a Colombian judoka . She won two Olympic medals and was world champion three times.

Athletic career

The 1.76 m tall Yuri Alvear fights in the middleweight division, the weight class up to 70 kilograms.

She won the 2007 Pan American Championships and took third place at the Pan American Games . In 2008 she was third in the Pan American Championships. At the 2008 Olympic Games , she won two fights and lost two fights, in the end she finished seventh.

At the end of March 2009, Alvear won the Pan American Championships, six weeks later she won the South American Championships. At the Judo World Championships in 2009 she defeated the Hungarian Anett Mészáros in the final and won her first world championship. In 2010 Alvear won the South American Games . At the Colombian national championships, she won both the middleweight and the open class. In 2011 she won the South American Championships and won bronze at the Pan American Championships. In the final of the Pan American Games she was defeated by the Cuban Onix Cortés . Alvear received a bronze medal at the Pan American Championships in 2012. Three months later, she won her first two fights at the 2012 Olympics and lost in the quarter-finals to Frenchwoman Lucie Décosse . With victories over the Slovenian Raša Sraka and the Chinese Chen Fei in the hope round , Alvear secured a bronze medal.

In 2013, Alvear won a bronze medal at the Pan American Championships. At the World Championships , Alvear won the quarterfinals over Lucie Délcosse. In the semifinals she beat the South Korean Hang Ye-sul and in the finals the German Laura Vargas Koch . In 2014 Alvear won four gold medals: After winning the South American Games and the Pan American Championships, she won her third world championship title at the end of August at the World Championships in Chelyabinsk with a final victory over the Japanese Karen Nun-Ira . At the end of the year, Alvear won the Central America and Caribbean Games . In 2015, she lost to the Canadian Kelita Zupancic in the final of the Pan American Championships . At the Pan American Games , she lost to Onix Cortés in the semifinals, but won the battle for bronze. A month and a half later she lost to the French Gévrise Émane in the quarter-finals of the World Championships in Astana , while Alvear defeated Austrian Bernadette Graf in the battle for bronze . In 2016 she won the final of the Pan American Championships against Kelita Zupancic. At the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro , she won three fights and lost the final against the Japanese Haruka Tachimoto .

In 2017 Alvear won the Grand Slam tournament in Baku. In the final of the Pan American Championships, she defeated Kelita Zupancic. In the semifinals of the Judo World Championships 2017 she was defeated by the Japanese Chizuru Arai , the battle for bronze she won against the French Marie Eve Gahié . As in 2010 and 2017, Alvear won the Colombian national championships in both middleweight and open class in 2018. At the Pan American Championships she won the final against Elvismar Rodríguez from Venezuela. In September 2018, Alvear won the bronze medal at the World Championships in Baku after defeating Chizuru Arai in the quarter-final by beating Zupancic and the Moroccan Assmaa Niang .

Web links

Commons : Yuri Alvear Orejuela  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Yuri Alvear in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Yuri Alvear on judoinside.com