LEAH Grosvenor’s fine run of form continues as the Samurai Judo Club player took gold at the prestigious UK School Games and also helped the England team to the team gold, in the process winning all eight of her contests.

Players from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are selected for the judo event at this multi-sport festival, this year held at Loughborough University.

A number of famous Samurai names from the past have competed and won medals, but no club member has won gold until now.

Newly installed as number one in the British rankings, however, Leah was favourite to become the first Samurai to take the gold.

Going on family holiday for the two weeks leading up to the event had left her short of mat practice and she started slightly shakily against the Scottish player ranked British number seven, but then Leah went smoothly up through the gears with a fine throw into one of her impregnable groundholds for maximum points.

She progressed to the semi-final with a comfortable win against the British number six.

The next round was expected to be her toughest contest against the current British number two and Scottish number one.

However, Leah has met her in competition three times this year and won all three, most notably in the final of the Commonwealth Youth Games recently in the Bahamas, so Leah’s confidence was high.

As always, though, breaking down this player is hard and the contest went to golden score before Leah finally secured the score she needed from a hip throw to book her place in the final.

The final was against another English player, currently fifth on the ranking list, from Bristol. She had been fighting well all day and was clearly up for a battle against Leah.

From the start, Leah dominated, but at the end of the normal time there was no score on the board, and so the contest went into unlimited extra time. Leah launched wave after wave of attacks, but the other girl managed to evade or block them and also get in enough of her own to avoid any penalties.

The contest stretched into ten minutes, a record for UKSG. Both girls were very tired, but Leah was still the fresher of the two and continued to dominate.

Now the other girl’s attacks became weaker and she dropped more and more, and after the fourth such drop she received a penalty and Leah was the winner and gold medalist.

On the next day, there was the traditional team event. Leah was as expected selected for the England A team, and they had an easy time of it in the pool, winning 7-0 against Wales and 8-0 against Scotland B, with Leah winning both of her contests by excellent maximum point throws.

In the other pool, Scotland A finished top, England B second and Northern Ireland third, so England A had England B in the semi-finals, and Leah had an excellent and comfortable win against her quarter-final victim from the day before.

That put them in the final against Scotland A, and yet another match between Leah and the British number two, but Leah was now really hitting form and dominated the contest, taking an early lead with a powerful hand throw and then controlling the contest, aware that her team needed wins rather than points. That helped England A to an eventual 4-1 win, with three draws in the eight-player team match, and the gold medal.

This weekend takes Leah’s tally for 2017 so far to thirteen medals including a staggering ten gold medals, plus the Wyre Forest Junior Sportswoman Of The Year award and gaining her black belt on her fifteenth birthday and now first place in the British rankings.