Darwish Wins Gold at African Judo Championship

Judo player Ramadan Darwish won the gold medal in the 100kg judo competition at the African Judo Games in Morocco.

Darwish qualified for the final after defeating Congo and Gabon's champion before heading on to defeat Morocco in the final. Darwish's victory adds to Egypt's its fourth gold medal in the prestigious competition as his teammates Ali Hazem, Eid and Abdel Rahman Mohammed earned gold as well.

The tournament included the participation of 52 African countries, including Egypt and is currently being held in four Moroccan cities, namely Rabat, Casablanca, New, and Sally. This tournament is one of the qualifying tournaments for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.

Darwish is an Egyptian judoka. Darwish won a bronze medal at the 2009 World Championships in Rotterdam -100 kg. In 2015 he also won the bronze medal during the World Masters in Rabat.

He is a multiple-time African Champion (six times). He also won Grand Prix in Qingdao (2009), Tashkent (2014 and Budapest in 2015. In 2016 he won gold at the Euro Open in Sofia. He was IJF world number 2 in 2009. He competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the -100 kg event and at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the same event.

Darwish was much more successful in 2016, reaching the quarterfinals by beating Dominic Dugasse in his first match and José Armenteros in the last 16 before losing to Elmar Gasimov.

Because Gasimov reached the final, Darwish entered the repackage, where he lost to Karl-Richard Frey so Ramadan Darwish ended up with the 7th place in Rio 2016. Darwish broke the record by becoming the champion of Mediterranean Games triple times.