Isabel Fernández

María Isabel Fernández Gutiérrez ( born 1 February 1972 in Alicante) is a Spanish judoka. She was in the Judo Olympic Champion 2000, World Champion in 1997 and six times European champion.

Career

Isabel Fernández won the 1988 Lightweight to 56 kilograms, the bronze medal at the European Junior Championships. She remained until 1997 in this weight class, after changing the weight classes they fought from 1998 to lightweight 57 kg. 1993 Fernández won their first Spanish league titles, more titles followed in 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2007.

In 1995, she won the silver medal at the European Championships in Birmingham. The following year, followed by bronze medals at the European Championships and the Olympic Games, in late 1996, she won at the Universiade. In 1997 she won silver at the European Championships after the world title in Paris with a final victory over the Cuban Olympic champion from 1996 Driulis González. 1998 saw her first European title. Fernández was first achieved in 1992 in Basel with the second place podium in a World Cup tournament in 1999 she succeeded in Paris, the first World Cup victory, the second shortly after the success followed at the tournament in Hertogenbosch. In Bratislava they could defend their European Championship title from the previous year in 1999, at the World Championships, she finished second behind Driulis González.

In 2000, Fernández won the World Cup in Prague. In the final of the Olympic Games in Sydney Fernández and González faced each other for the third time, Fernández succeeded in revenge for 1999 and therefore the Olympic victory. The following year she won her third European title and at the World Championships she won the bronze medal. In March 2002, she won in Prague, Warsaw and Rotterdam in three World Cup tournaments in a row, at the European Championships in Maribor, she won a bronze medal. In 2003 she succeeded in Dusseldorf, the fourth European Cup victory at the World Championships in Osaka, however, it reached only the seventh. In 2004, she reach four tournament wins; In addition to the World Cup tournament in Sofia and Rome, she also won the Paris tournament in Bucharest and they defended their European title. At the Olympic Games in Athens, she was defeated in the first round of the German vice world champion Yvonne Boenisch. In the repechage Isabel Fernández then fought until the battle for bronze through, but it lost to the Cuban Yurisleidy Lupetey, reaching fifth place. After two bronze medals at the European Championships in 2005 and 2006, she won her sixth continental title in 2007. At the World Championships in Rio de Janeiro, they drove not only as the reigning European champion but also as a three- time World Cup winner. Fernández achieved in eight years a World Cup final but lost there to the North Korean defending champion Kye Sun -hui.

In the ten years since the introduction of the 57 - kilogram class in 1998 Fernández had won six titles at the European Championships and three bronze medals, only 2000, she did not compete; In 2008, she lost the final of the Austrian Sabrina Filzmoser. In its fourth at the Olympics in Beijing in 2008 she left early and finished ninth.