Preliminaries deliver insane results and surprises

What a crazy day in Rio with the preliminaries for men U90kg and women U70kg with the most insane surprises. The sensation so far on the day is Chinese judoka Cheng Xunzhao who defeated three huge medal candidates. Starting with triple World Champion and double Olympic medallist Ilias Iliadis. After the Greek former World number one Toth Krisztian was surprised in the same way Iliadis was caught.

In the quarter final the strong and solid Swede Marcus Nyman was his opponent, and.. also Nyman lost his battle in a straight ippon. So most European favourites on their back as also Noel van 't End lost his first match. Asley Gonzalez, 2013 World Champion lost his second match and the Asian athletes benefit best. Coach of Cheng is former success coach from Korea Chung Hoon who works at the Olympics since 2014 and until these Games. Chung booked Olympic success with Kim Jae-Bum and other great Koreans. Cheng is in the semi final against Mashu Baker of Japan, the other favourite in that pool, but he managed to meet the expectations.

The second semi final is between world champion Gwak Dong-Hon and Varlam Liparteliani. Liparteliani won twice, once in a team meeting, but the last victory was for Gwak at the World Championships last year. Liparteliani is the only European athlete in the semi final of the men's team.

In the women’s event the day started wild with losses for World Number one Kim Polling and World Champion Emane Gevrise. Haruka Tachimoto defeated Polling in a thriller in the golden score and Sally Conway is in shape with victories over Emane and Linda Bolder. Conway will now fight Yuri Alvear, the Colombian triple world champion who won bronze in London. She defeated Conway twice and may stunt again. The other semi is between Tachimoto and Laura Vargas Koch who bested Austrian rival Bernadette Graf in the quarter final. Laura Vargas Koch must do the utmost to defeate Tachimoto who is her nemesis, she lost four times to the Japanese who is keen to book the first big women’s result for Japan this week.

repechage men:

Iddir vs Nyman

Mehdiyev vs Lkhagvasuren

repechage women:

Zupancic vs Graf

Bernabeu vs Bolder