Hisayoshi Harasawa grabs last gold in IJF World Tour 2015

The last final of the day, of the Grand Slam in Tokyo, and of the last final of 2015 opposed the top seeded Japanese judoka and world silver medallist, Shichinohe Ryu and Harasawa Hisayoshi, winner of the last Paris Grand Slam in October. After 35 seconds, both athletes were penalised for passivity.

At the end of the five minutes, both Shichinohe and Harasawa, who are dreaming to maybe one day dethrone the king Teddy Riner, were penalised with three shido each. That meant golden score was required. After a sequence of several combined attacks from Harasawa, Shichinohe was finally penalised a last time offering the victory to Harasawa.

The first bronze medal fight of the last category of the day opposed Levani Matiashvili (GEO) and the last man who defeated Teddy Riner, Kamikawa Daiki (JPN) but that was back in 2010. Since then, Kamikawa never seemed in the position to repeat his performance and the French giant has been invincible as was the case in China and in Korea, during the last two IJF events. After five minutes where Kamikawa proved to be more active than his opponent, he finally won the medal with a single shido difference.

The second bronze medal contest saw Soslan Bostanov (RUS) and Stanislav Bondarenko (UKR) fighting to join Shichinohe and Harasawa on the podium. Only 33 seconds were necessary for Bondarenko to send Bostanov to the tatami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium with a huge ko-soto-gari for ippon.