T&T’s Gabriel­la Wood had her Olympic Games de­but sta­tus con­firmed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Ju­do Fed­er­a­tion (IJF) on Tues­day.

This af­ter the IJF pub­lished the of­fi­cial list of ath­letes qual­i­fied for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games next month.

Ac­cord­ing to the IJF state­ment on its web­site, the qual­i­fi­ca­tion pe­ri­od that was ini­tial­ly planned to end in June 2020, was ex­tend­ed to June 2021, fin­ish­ing im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the World Ju­do Cham­pi­onships Hun­gary 2021 at which Wood par­tic­i­pat­ed.

And it al­so in­cludes all the points won by the par­tic­i­pants of the World Ju­do Tour.

While T&T will have one rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wood some Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees, in co­or­di­na­tion with the na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions, will now have to choose their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in cas­es where sev­er­al ath­letes from the same na­tion are in­side the qual­i­fi­ca­tion quo­ta.

For three years ath­letes from the five con­ti­nents, rep­re­sent­ing 110 na­tions, in­clud­ing Japan as the host na­tion, have com­pet­ed to earn the right to com­pete on the Olympic stage.

Wood cur­rent­ly has a rank­ing of 72nd in the +78kg cat­e­go­ry with 278 points and along with Nicaraguan Iza­yana Maren­co se­cured their places in Tokyo via the ninth and tenth Pan Amer­i­can Con­ti­nen­tal quo­ta spots of 11 re­spec­tive­ly.

Over­all, 20 coun­tries will be in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate at the Bu­dokan this sum­mer, as well as six refugee ath­letes as mem­bers of the Olympic refugee team.

Last month Wood failed to get past her first op­po­nent at the sev­en-day 2021 Ju­do World Cham­pi­onships at the Las­z­lo Papp Bu­dapest Sports Are­nain Hun­gary.

Com­pet­ing in the +79kg di­vi­sion, the 23-year-old Wood was beat­en in her open­ing round fight, the sec­ond round by world 38th ranked Anzhela Gas­par­i­an of the Russ­ian Ju­do Fed­er­a­tion (RJF).

Gas­par­i­an was able to ex­e­cute an Ip­pon throw (where an ath­lete is sub­dued on their back) to win the Group A match against Wood.

Gas­par­i­an went on to fight the World and Olympic cham­pi­on Idalys Or­tiz (Cu­ba), the top ranked com­peti­tor in the next round.

Or­tiz then went on to win the fifth po­si­tion in the group. The over­all win­ner of the cat­e­go­ry was Sarah Asahi­na of Japan, who is the sec­ond ranked women’s ju­do ath­lete in the world.

The out­come of the match did not af­fect Wood’s hold­ing on­to the Olympic slot for the Pan Amer­i­can re­gion

Gas­par­i­an had de­feat­ed Mon­go­lian Adiya­suren Amar­saikhan, ranked 112th, in their first round.