Martin Pacek completes Swedish golden party in Tyumen

Martin Pacek of Sweden has earned a reputation for being an awkward fighter with a style that frustrates his opponents. His results speak for themselves and the Swedish fighter, who will be seeded for the Olympics, showed a wide range of techniques in the final against former Baku Grand Slam winner Adlan Bisultanov (RUS). Pacek prolonged his title in Sweden and booked his second Grand Slam victory in his career, on a day where also Marcus Nyman took gold.

The leggy Pacek went ahead with a yuko from a reaching ouchi-gari and then held down his Russian opponent with a kuzure-tate-shiho-gatame in an alarmingly straight forward win for the former. The World Judo Masters bronze medallist booked his second Grand Slam and also counts two Grand Prix victories.

The first bronze medal was won by Tashkent Grand Prix bronze medallist Niiaz Bilalov (RUS) who defeated former Ulaanbaatar Grand Prix bronze medallist Benjamin Fletcher (GBR). A committed uchi-mata from the Russian settled the contest as Bilalov won his first Grand Slam medal while Fletcher still achieved his best result at a Grand Slam and has plenty of footage to analyse and areas to work on before making his Olympic debut (by way of a continental quota sport) at Rio 2016. The second bronze was won by 2015 Tyumen Grand Slam bronze medallist Kazbek Zankishiev (RUS) who repeated as Madrid European Open bronze medallist Jalil Shukurov (AZE) received four penalties and hansoku-make in a toothless performance.