Gemma Gibbons took home a well-earned bronze medal at the Qingdao Grand Prix in China on Sunday 22 November.

Gibbons (-78kg) got off to a good start as she beat Spain’s Marta Tort Merino in her opening contest scoring for both waza-ari and yuko.

Her next opponent was former world champion Kyong Sol (PRK), whom Gibbons had beaten at the World Championships in Astana earlier this year. However this time it was the British judoka who lost out being scored against for waza-ari.

This put Gibbons into the repechage where a single shido was enough for her to see off Anastasiya Dmitrieva (RUS) on her way to the bronze medal match against another Russian Alena Kachorovskaya.

Gibbons had a 3-0 head to head going into the contest and she added a fourth win to that tally as a yuko by hold down was enough for her to take bronze and secure another 120 points towards Rio qualification.

Andy Burns (-90kg) also kept up his push for Rio Olympic qualification as he finished in seventh. Burns saw off the challenge of Spain’s David Ruiz Zajac in his opening contest before an impressive win by ippon over Marc Odenthal booked him a spot in the quarter-finals.

A yuko was all that separated Burns from his next opponent, Alexandre Iddir (FRA), and the British judoka moved into the repechage where he lost to Ramin Gurbanov (AZE) being scored against for both waza-ari and ippon.

Frazer Chamberlain (-90kg) and Sarah Adlington (+78kg) were both in action on the final day in Qingdao with Chamberlain defeating Christian Schmidt (ARG) in his first contest by ippon before losing out to Kenta Nagawasa (JPN) who would go onto win gold. Adlington went out in the first round losing to Sisi Ma (CHN) after being scored against for ippon.