Marcus Nyman gives Sweden Olympic medal confidence

Swedish Marcus Nyman gives his country Olympic medal hope and lit the fire with another great performances and continued his astounding upward trajectory as he won U90kg gold at the Grand Slam Baku by beating Havana Grand Prix bronze medallist Aleksandar Kukolj of Serbia n the final.

European Championships bronze medallist Nyman added to his incredible 2016 haul of Dusseldorf Grand Prix gold, Samsun Grand Prix silver and continental bronze with four ippons in his five wins which included holding down Kukolj for the full 20 seconds for ippon. Kukolj became the first Serbian man ever to medal at a Grand Slam.

In the first semi-final four-time world medallist Kirill Denisov (RUS) was shocked by Kukolj by a waza-ari score. The misfiring Russian could not threaten the scoreboard and had turn his attention to a potential bronze medal while in the second semi-final Jeju Grand Prix silver medallist Axel Clerget (FRA) went down to  Nyman after being penalised on four occasions to receive hansoku-make.

The first bronze medal was awarded to Clerget who beat Samsun Grand Prix silver medallist Mammadali Mehdiyev (AZE) to win the second Grand Slam medal of his career. Clerget is a stylish fighter with an eye-catching repertoire of techniques and opened the scoring with a yoko-tomoe-nage for a yuko and went back to the same technique for a second yuko. The Frenchman almost got caught as the Azeri was now wary of the repetitive attacks and momentarily trapped Clerget in osaekomi but he swiftly escaped and held on for the remaining seven seconds. The second bronze medal went to Denisov who comprehensively beat Havana Grand Prix bronze medallist Ciril Grossklaus (SUI) with a left-sided harai-makikomi for ippon.