Japanese wrestler Kaori Icho won her third consecutive Olympic gold in the 63kg women’s freestyle wrestling, after an easy win against China’s Jing Ruixue.

It is Icho’s third gold since women started competing in wrestling at the Olympics, back in 2004. She won the gold at both Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Olympic editions.

Icho is seven-time world champion and was a big favourite to retain her Olympic title.

In another category, Hitomi Obara won gold in the 48-kilogram freestyle wrestling event after beating Mariya Stadnyk of Azerbaijan.

Japan has thus doubled in only one day its number of gold medals at the 2012 Olympics to four. It won so far 31 medals of all colours at the London Games.

Wrestler Saori Yoshida is also a big favourite to win the gold medal in the 55-kilogram category, on Thursday.