Top seed Gerbi overcame home favourite Maricet Espinosa, bronze medallist at last year’s Qingdao Grand Prix, in the first final of the day.  

Gerbi’s first attack was perfectly blocked by her Cuban opponent, who responded almost immediately by going on the offensive but for no score.

Controlling the fight perfectly, Gerbi finally placed one of her preferred techniques to score a waza-ari and justify her status as one of the favourites for the Olympic title at Rio 2016.

"I have been waiting for this feeling of winning gold since 2014 and this is too long for me," said Gerbi, a former world champion. 

"It feels great.

"I’m not at my best right now, but it’s important to win even when you are not at your best.

"Every time I think of the Olympics, I have the butterflies and this is my dream."

The first bronze medal contest of the day opposed Sweden’s Mia Hermansson and Ecuador’s Estefania Garcia with the former coming out on top, while Ekaterina Valkova won an all-Russian affair against Pari Surakatova in the second.

In the under 70kg final, Bolder went up against Hungary’s Szabina Gercsák, the junior world champion and gold medallist at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.

Having started with a kata-guruma technique, Bolder concluded with the same but this time for a yuko which gave her the victory and a second gold medal for Israel.

"The spirit in the team is very strong," said Bolder.

"We had a silver yesterday and two golds today.

"We feel really positive for this year."

Brazil’s Maria Portela beat Croatia’s Barbara Matic in the first bronze medal fight and was joined on the third step of the podium by France’s Marie Eve Gahie, who saw off the challenge of Uzbekistan’s Gulnoza Matniyazova.

There was also a gold medal today for Azerbaijan’s Rustam Orujov as the world number one claimed the men’s under 73kg crown after beating the United Arab Emirates’ Victor Scvortov, the 2013 world bronze medallist.

Scvortov seemed to dominate the fight, but Orujov did more than reduce the score with a counter-attack as the 2015 Baku Grand Slam winner took a strong lead with a waza-ari, which was enough to take the win. 

Germany’s Igor Wandtke and Mongolia’s Odbayar Ganbaatar won the bronze medals after beating France’s Pierre Duprat and Belgium’s Sami Chouchi respectively.

The last final of the day saw top seed and world number eight Khasan Khalmurzaev of Russia beat American veteran Travis Stevens to win the men’s under 81kg title.

Khalmurzaev scored a first waza-ari at the beginning of the bout with a superb action-reaction movement on the edge of the fighting area and controlled the rest of the match to secure victory.

Greece’s Roman Moustopoulos beat Germany’s Sven Maresch in the first bronze medal fight, after which Hungary’s Laszlo Csoknyai overcame another German, Alexander Wieczerzak.

Action in Havana is due to conclude tomorrow with the women’s under 78kg and over 78kg categories and men’s under 90kg, under 100kg and over 100kg classes.

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