Germany Wins Ladies Team Division at the 21st European Kendo Championship in Lisbon, Portugal

Saturday, April 28, 2007

The German Ladies Team (Safiya Fadai, Sabrian Kumpf, Susanne Aoki, Dance Yokoo, and Kei Udagawa) soundly defeated the Polish Ladies Team to capture the 1st European Ladies Team Championship this afternoon. As they did with all of their opponents, except the French, the German's dominated Poland nearly from start to finish. Even Sweden, which had managed to defeat Great Britain in three rounds, was only able to score a single kote (Komaki/Kumpf) and men (Gustavesson/Yooko) against the Germans. The French, however, caused the Germans a little bit of consternation and forced a stalemate in two of their matches (Kumf/Brunel and Yooko/Garcia). In the end the German Ladies Team remained poised and dominant advancing quickly past all their opponents to capture the day.

You could expect that winning the inaugural Ladies Team Championship will give the Germans a swagger and push them to perform strongly in Day 2 (Ladies Individual and Mens Team) and Day 3 (Mens Individual).