Former Universiade Participants already claiming the Olympic Podium

Right: Former SU participants Charline Van Snick (BEL) and Éva Csernoviczki (HUN) together on the Olympic judo podium (Photo IJF)

While the London Olympics officially kicked-off last Friday July 27th, former FISU student-athletes have already mounted the medal podium and pocketed Olympic brass.

Early in the Olympic tournament, a number of expected judo medals were won by former Universiade participants since judo traditionally has strong contenders present at the FISU event. Belgian judoka Charline Van Snick, N° 4 in the world in her weight category (-48kg) won her first Olympic bronze medal on Saturday. The Belgian athlete participated at the Summer Universiade in Bangkok, Thailand (2007) and Belgrade, Serbia (2009). She joined the 3rd place on the medal podium with Hungarian Éva Csernoviczki, who previously got FISU bronze at the 2009 SU and at the 2006 WUC Judo. Another Hungarian judoka ended up the Olympic medal podium, i.e. Miklós Ungvári won the silver in the men’s -68kg category. At the 2004 and 2006 WUC Judo he won gold and silver respectively. Japanese Masashi Ebinuma, a gold medalist in Belgrade has pocketed a bronze medal in London as well.

Clément Lefert, French flag bearer and multiple medalist at the Shenzhen SU wins gold in the London Olympic pool (Photo: C. Pierre/FISU)

Our French member association FFSU will be pleased with Céline Goberville (2007 SU and 2010 WUC Shooting Sport champion) who won the 10m pistol silver medal in London and with Clément Lefert, one of the golden boys of the 4×100 m relay freestyle in the Olympic pool. Besides being the flag bearer of the French delegation at the 2011 Summer Universiade in Shenzhen, Lefert won silver in the 200m freestyle and bronze in the 4x100m freestyle relay.

Cate Campbell on the Shenzhen SU podium (Photo: FISU Archives)Joy also with AUS, the Australian FISU member association when Cate Campbell won gold in the 4 x 100m freestyle relay in an Olympic Record time. Cate was a part of the AUS Universiade team to win gold in the same event at the 2011 Shenzhen Universiade where she also won a bronze in the 50m freestyle in the Universiade pool.

Universiade Legend VezzaliTriple Olympic champion (2000, 2004 & 2008) and quadruple Universiade (4 individual golds and 1 team gold and 3 team silver at 4 SU) fencing legend Valentina Vezzali did not manage to win a 4^th Olympic gold back to back, but had to settle for a bronze on the All-Italian podium. Valentina also received the honors of carrying the Italian tricolore at the Opening Ceremony.

More former FISU participants were spotted as flag bearer for their country’s delegation: an overview of those known to the FISU Media Department:

Belgium: 2008 Olympic High Jump Champion Tia Hellebaut (1999 SU)

Estonia: Universiade Discus Champion Aleksander Tammert (2001 SU)

Guam: Wrestler Maria Dunn (2010 FISU Forum – Vigo)

Italy: Multiple Olympic and Universiade Fencing Champion Valentina Vezzali (1995-1997-1999-2001 SU)

Kenya: Triple Universiade swimming medalist Jason Dunford (2009 SU)

Kyrgyzstan: Judoka Chingiz Mamedov (2011 SU)

Montenegro: Srdjan Mravaljevic (2007 & 2009 SU)

Morocco: Taekwondo silver medalist Wiam Dislam (2011 SU)

Mozambique: Multiple SU medalist Kurt Couto (2007 & 2011 SU)

C. Pierre, FISU Press Officer