Tenacious Howey takes deserved silver

Despite injury having put the Olympic silver medallist Kate Howey out of competition since February, she produced one of the finest performances of her long and distinguished career by taking her second world silver medal at the World Championships here yesterday.

Howey tenaciously fought her way through a testing series of contests to meet Masae Ueno, of Japan, in the final, and this was where her lack of competition fitness showed. Howey was ahead until the last minute when she was given a small penalty for a technical infringement forcing her to attack and concede another small score.

But the 28-year-old, trained by Roy Inman, can be proud of this medal. Howey has fought in six consecutive World Championships, and now has one gold, two silvers, two bronzes and a fifth place – exceptional consistency by any standards.

Just how sharp she was could be seen in the very first fight when Violet Vuckovic, from Yugoslavia, was dumped for ippon with her hall-marked pick-up in 38 seconds.

Marie Chisholm, of Canada, was harder and her defensive style made it difficult for Howey to win cleanly with a big throw. But, using her experience, she chipped away with the attacks, the Canadian incurred penalties for passivity, and middleweight Howey won with a five-point score.

The South Korean Mi Jung Kim was world and Olympic champion in 1991 and 1992, and was trying to make a comeback. She ran into a brick wall with Howey, however, who produced a strong feint with a forward throw and, at the last second, switched to a backward throw. Kim was sliced off her feet on to her back, the breath knocked from her body.

Howey's semi-final opponent, France's Amina Abdellatif, has never won a major medal and she could have been lured into over-confidence. But yet again she contained the desire to be reckless, kept the attacks going, and won on a clear decision winning a place in the final against Ueno.

Scotland's Graeme Randall, 26, failed to retain the light-middleweight world title he won in Birmingham two years ago, but put in his best performance since then. Only a moment's over-confidence at the end of the semi-final against the South Korean In-Chul Cho, a former world champion himself, saw him thrown decisively. And he was winning on attacks to that point.

Randall lost the bronze medal match against Harutyan Gharibyan, of Azerbaijan, but the three wins that took him so close to a medal showed that he is still a world force.