Spanish judoka Marta Arce won the fourth Paralympic medal of her career on Friday after winning the fight for bronze in the -57 kg J2 category at the Paris Games, a feat that came twelve years later, after a long journey with many threats of retreat and as the mother of a large family.
The woman from Valladolid, flag bearer of the Opening Ceremony, once again tasted the joy of being on the Paralympic podium, and she did it for the first time accompanied by her husband and three children, Kenji, Issei and Yumi, that it is double. for this veteran judoka.
Arce, 47, decided to leave after London 2012, where he won bronze, to devote himself more to family life, but he never left judo. And after seeing that in Rio 2016 a successful generation of women to which she belongs Carmen Herrera and Monica Merenciano She returned to Tokyo, where she qualified by overcoming physical problems and combined it with being the mother of a large family.
In a mythical place like Nippon Budokan, cradle of his sport, he was to take the podium, but lost in the fight for bronze. “It’s over, I need the joints I have left, to preserve them for the rest of my life. I will not separate myself from judo. I took the opportunity to take the 5 DAN exam, started doing katas and liked it I have another form.” to do judo is not very strong,” commented the Spaniard that day.
But not like that. Arce was able to reverse his first decision and returned to the tatami, where he once again remained competitive. He qualified for Paris 2024 and the Arena de Champs-de-Mars He did not waste his chance to add a new success to the silver achieved in Athens 2004 (-57 kg) and in Beijing 2008 (-63 kg) and the bronze in London 2012 (-63 kg) and prevent the judo to leave the French capital empty.
His journey began with good feelings because he easily won his first fight against the Turkish Dondu Yeyilsurt, world champion in 2022 and European champion in 2023, in the J1 class (blind judokas), thanks to a ‘waza-ari’ and ‘ippon’.
Then, he has an Uzbek opponent, always tough, like Kumushkhon Khodjaeva, which eliminated him from the ticket to the final by managing to score a ‘waza-ari’, impossible to overcome by the Valladolid player, who has little time to recover for the fight for the bronze.
And there, he destroyed the Brazilian Lucía da Silva Teixeira, hit the ‘ippon’ The fight has not yet begun, a kind of revenge also for the Valladolid woman, who lost the gold in Beijing 2008 to the Venezuelan Naomi Soazo after three seconds.