RNZ<\/a> <\/p>\nAndrews won the title in the +78kg class with an Ippon victory over Richella Soppi Mbella of Cameroon in the final.<\/p>\n
The last New Zealander judo athlete to win a title at the Commonwealth Games was Brent Cooper in Auckland in 1990.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old from Gisborne, who is based in England, was a late inclusion in the New Zealand team for Glasgow after she was forced to prove her fitness following an injury.<\/p>\n
However the injury didn’t affect her games, winning all three of her bouts by Ippon, which is a single throw that scores an instant win.<\/p>\n
But 2 minutes and 33 seconds into the final against Mbella, Andrews was unsure is she’d actually won.<\/p>\n
“I thought I threw her for the full score so that’s why I got up but then I don’t know if I heard anyone say anything and so I just had an instinct to get back on top of her because I felt something was wrong and nothing was actually scored,” Andrews said afterwards.<\/p>\n
“Just the emotions and I was really holding her down because I wasn’t going to risk her getting out of it… it was unreal.”<\/p>\n
The score was confirmed and Andrews became New Zealand’s 10th gold medallist of the Games.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Andrews overcame Marie Durhone of Mauritius in the quarter-finals and then battled past Marthe Gnacadja Avaro of Gabon in a semi-final which the Kiwi said was brutal.<\/p>\n
“She kicked the s**t out of my shin, but “pain is a just a four letter word and I pushed through it”.<\/p>\n
Andrews, who claimed bronze in Birmingham four years ago, thanked her support team for helping her win gold.<\/p>\n
“Honestly we did so much work behind the scenes to get to where we are now.”<\/p>\n
Team-mate Kody Andrews (no relation) took a bronze medal in the men’s +100kg class.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including another earthquake wakes thousands, a Kiwi runner sets an ultramarathon record, and the lucky escape for a New York scooter rider. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydnee Andrews has made history by becoming the first New Zealand woman to win a Commonwealth Games gold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[149073,166477,111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-556968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-combat-sports","tag-commonwealth-games","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}