Rio Olympic champions Sara Dosho and Risako Kawai and debutant Yui Susaki won gold at the world wrestling championships, while Mayu Mukaida settled for silver Thursday as all four Japanese women advanced to the finals of their respective weight categories.
Dosho defeated Aline Focken of Germany 3-0 in the 69-kilogram final, Kawai beat Allison Ragan of the United States by technical fall at 60 kg and 18-year-old Susaki came from behind to prevail over Emilia Vuc of Romania in 48 kg, each claiming her first world title.
Vanesa Kaladzinskaya of Belarus prevented a Japanese sweep Thursday by winning the 53-kg final 8-6 over Mukaida.
Japan has claimed five gold medals at the ongoing world championships in Paris, including Haruna Okuno's win in the women's 55 kg and Kenichiro Fumita's victory in the men's Greco-Roman 59-kg division.
Dosho, 22, had suffered a left shoulder injury prior to the worlds and has been able to compete with the help of pain killers.
"I was able to win at the Olympics, but I didn't have a gold medal from the world championships," said Dosho, making her fourth appearance at a world meet after finishing runner-up behind Focken in 2014 and taking bronze in 2013 and 2015.
"If I didn't win here, I couldn't have helped it if people thought my Olympic victory was just a fluke. I feel like I finally became a real champion," she said.
Kawai, who won gold in 63 kg at the Rio de Janeiro Games last year and was a silver medalist at the worlds in 2015, noted that the gold medal at a world championship has "different weight" from the won she won at the Olympic Games.
"These world championships were difficult because I had won at the Olympics. Opponents have done a lot of research on me. I think this difficulty is something that only Sara (Dosho) and I can understand," the 22-year-old Kawai said.
Susaki, the reigning Asian champion who won four of her five bouts -- including the final -- by technical fall, said, "I endured hard training because I wanted to become a world champion. I'm very happy to win the gold medal."
Mukaida, who won in last year's world championships for non-Olympic weight classes at 55 kg, allowed 2012 world champion Kaladzinskaya to come from behind in the last 10 seconds of their match.
Japanese women won six medals -- four golds, one silver and one bronze -- in eight categories, in the absence of veterans Kaori Icho, who won her fourth straight Olympic gold at Rio last year, and Saori Yoshida, who had three consecutive Summer Games golds until settling for silver in Rio.
Meanwhile, the sport's ruling body, United World Wrestling, has eliminated the four weight classes in which Japanese women won gold medals at last year's Olympics. The new classes will be 50, 53, 57, 62, 68 and 76 kg.
Japan's Rio medals came in 48, 58, 63 and 69 kg.
==Kyodo
