Poland suddenly have a solution U73kg with gold for Damian Szwarnowiecki

The gold at the Grand Prix in Samsun for men U73kg was for the first time ever U73kg for a Polish man. Damian Szwarnowiecki took the victory in Turkey by defeating Kim Chol Gwang in the final. The North Korean was caught by a left ko-ochi of the young Polish talent who won two European U23 titles.

Today Szwarnowieckiwas coached by another former talent who had all the possibilities to shine: A car accident stopped the career of Tomasz Kowalski, but he is back and successful today with Szwarnowiecki. For the first time ever U73kg Polish man won an IJF World Tour event, organized since 2009. Two Polish men won gold in a World Cup before, Krzysztof Wilkomirski and Tomasz Adamiec both won a World Cup in 2011 in this category. Actually there was only one Polish male judoka who won an IJF World Tour, in 2009 Robert Krawczyk U81kg in Abu Dhabi. Now Damian Szwarnowiecki wins gold as he confirms that Polish judo in a high speed elevator, with the women, but now also in the men’s category.

Only in the final Szwarnowiecki needed the full five minutes, his previous four matches were decided by ippon. In the quarter final he had a serious opponent in the skilled seoi nage specialist Nuno Saraiva of Portugal, and in the semi final he defeated Hasan Vanlioglu for his homecrowd convincingly by waza-ari followed by ippon.

Poland can celebrated the resurrection of Polish men’s judo. In 2012 Pawel Zagrodnik represented Poland at the Olympic Games. All of a sudden Poland have a successor jumping from 250 point to 546 points, straight into the qualification zone at place 25 with a distance of 44 points to the last qualfied spot.