The story is about the ones behind Teddy Riner

The attraction of third day of the Grand Prix in Samsun, once again, was the presence of French 8 time World Champion Teddy Riner. Invincible since 2010, the French came to Samsun to fight, to test himself, after he had to withdraw from the Paris Grand Slam, last February, due to an injury.

He successively defeated Juhan Mettis (EST), Daniel Allerstorfer (AUT) and Brazilian David Moura in the semi-final, all by ippon.  In the final Riner was opposed to young Levani Matiashvili who had an excellent day of fighting today and even in the final he stand his man against the undisputable Teddy Riner. When the end of the fight was approaching there were still only two shido in the advantage of the French. It is only on the last second that Riner was able to launch his uchi-mata for a yuko just on the edge of the fighting area. Riner won gold, but more interesting was how, and who were behind Riner. Unfortunately Levani Matiashvili likely won't be at the Olympic Games at all. The ones who fight make the fight attractive.

The first bronze medal fight opposed the European Games champion, Adam Okruashvili (GEO) and Iurii Krakovetskii (KGZ). After one minute and thirty seconds of observation without strong attacks, both competitors were penalised with a shido, and a few seconds later, it was Okruashvili only who was penalised. But the small shido advantage of Krakovetskii was not valid for very long and within a few second the Kirghiz was penalised two times, reaching three penalties. Forty seconds before the final gong, after a vacillating situation, Okruashvili was finally able to overthrow Krakovetskii for a waza-ari that was concluded on the floor for ippon and the ninth Grand Prix medal for the Georgian.

The second bronze medal fight saw two Brazilians fighting eachother for an Olympic spot: Rafael Silva and David Moura facing off for a place on the podium. At least today’s result will count. If Brazil is automatically qualified for the Games, which one of the heavy weight will represent the host country in Rio is not decided yet. After 50 seconds, Silva was penalised a first time for passivity. A moment later, it was Moura’s turn to collect a shido for passivity. Neither of the athletes being actually able to put the other one in danger, they had to enter into the golden score. 51 seconds were finally necessary for Silva to score a yuko with a small ko-uchi-gari.