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- Dubai 04:26 05:44 12:20 15:47 18:50 20:08
Cuba's Driulis Gonzalez fights against Austria's Claudia Heill in their women's -63kg judo match of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. (AFP)
The pair qualified for the last four in contrasting fashion with Tanimoto beating both her opponents by the maximum ippon score while Gonzalez had to scrap and battle her way through.
Japan's Tanimoto pinned both Ysis Barreto of Venezuela and South Korea's Kong Ja-Young, the latter after a powerful turn-over on the ground.
Cuban Gonzalez, one of the most successful women fighters of all time, had a tougher draw and narrowly edged out Claudia Heill of Austria before squeezing past Taiwan's Wang Chin-Fang.
Gonzalez was Olympic champion back in 1996 in Atlanta at a lower weight division and is also a three-time world champion.
She has won seven World Championship medals and if she takes home a gong from Beijing she would equal the record haul of five Olympic medals won by Japan's -48kg fighter Ryoko Tani, who claimed a bronze medal on the opening day of the Games.
On the other side of the draw France's Lucie Decosse, the 2005 world champion and runner-up last year, was in fine form.
She dispatched the dangerous Urska Zolnir of Slovenia with an arm lock and after a battle to get past Israeli Alice Schlesinger in the second round, she threw Germany's Anna von Harnier for ippon with a delightful uchi-mata (inner thigh throw).
She will meet North Korean surprise Won Ok Im in the other evening semi-final.
In the men's -81kg category Germany's former twice European champion Ole Bischof upset world champion Tiago Camilo of Brazil in the quarter-final.
Camilo had been in dazzling form until then, beating Japan's Takashi Ono in convincing fashion before flattening powerful Iranian Malek Mohammadi with a subtle kouchi-gari (foot sweep).
But Bischof had his number on the day and nullified Camilo's strengths to set up a semi-final against rugged Ukrainian Roman Gontyuk, the silver medallist in Athens four years ago.
On the other side of the draw, 2005 world champion Guillhaume Elmont beat 2000 Olympic champion at -73kg Guiseppe Maddaloni of Italy on the way to reaching the last four.
He will face South Korean Kim Jae-Bum in the semi-final after the Asian champion beat the European champions of the last two years, Portual's Joao Neto and Robert Krawczyk of Poland.
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