Nationality Sweden Weight 52 kg (115 lb) Event(s) 52 kg | Height 1.58 m (5 ft 2 in) Sport Judo | |
Full name Sanna Maria Karolin Askelöf Born 5 February 1983 (age 34) ( 1983-02-05 ) Stockholm, Sweden | ||
Sanna Maria Karolin Askelöf (born February 5, 1983 in Stockholm) is a Swedish judoka who competed in the women's half-lightweight category. Being raised by a Swedish father and a Norwegian mother and holding a dual citizenship to compete internationally, Askelof held five national senior titles in her own division, picked up a total of twenty-eight medals in her career, and represented her paternal nation Sweden in the 52-kg class at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Throughout most of her sporting career until 2009, Askelof trained as a full-fledged member of the judo squad for Södra Sports Club (Swedish: Idrotts Klubb Södra, IK Södra) in Farsta.
Askelof qualified as a lone judoka for the Swedish squad in the women's half-lightweight class (52 kg) at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, by placing third from the A-Tournament in Tallinn, Estonia. She lost her opening match to Cuba's Amarilis Savón, who successfully scored an ippon and gripped her with a kuzure kami shiho gatame (broken upper four-quarter hold down) at one minute and twenty-seven seconds. In the repechage, Askelof mounted her strength on the tatami to outscore and pin South Korea's Lee Eun-hee thirty-seven seconds into the match, but slipped her medal chance away in a defeat to Belgian judoka and eventual bronze medalist Ilse Heylen by a waza-ari awasete ippon point and a kesa-gatame (scarf hold).