Kirill Denisov catches gold at debut U100kg in Qingdao

Four-time world medallist Kirill Denisov from Russia stepped up to U100kg with devastating effect in Qingdao as he drove past Samsun Grand Prix bronze medallist Khutag Tsogtgerel of Mongolia in the final to win a debut gold at his new weight. Denisov, who has fought for a medal at the last six World Championships, has given up his world number 12 ranking at U90kg to move up to the U100kg category.

That decision was vindicated in his first competition at U100kg as he beat first-time finalist Khutag by ippon after 29 seconds with a tani-otoshi.

Denisov said: “I did two Olympic cycles at U90kg and I felt like now was the time to make a change. This is a good start for me but there is a lot of hard work ahead. I think that now I will really show my best judo and I want to see how my power works out at this weight. I will go to Tokyo and hope to continue this positive start at U100kg but I know it will be extremely difficult in Japan.”

In the first semi-final Denisov had to work harder than he expected to see off Taipei Asian Open bronze medallist Hong Yi Chih (TPE). The contest was scoreless after five minutes but Hong had been penalised three times as he was fighting to hold off the Russian who made a smooth transition to life at -100kg. In the second semi-final Orenburg European Cup bronze medallist Maksud Ibragimov (RUS) was beaten by Khutag on shidos as the Russian was penalised three times while the latter was only penalised once.

The first bronze medal was won by Ibragimov who defeated Abu Dhabi Grand Slam bronze medallist Philip Awiti-Alcaraz (GBR) by a yuko from a sode-tsurikkomi-goshi. Russia were already assured of gold or silver in the -100kg final and Ibragimov made sure that there would be two Russian’s on the -100kg medal podium with a narrow victory as Londoner Awiti-Alcaraz was unable to put together any of his highly-regarded hip techniques or his uchi-mata. The second bronze medal was won by Hu Mingchao (CHN) who defeated Hong in an exciting contest which gripped the crowd which was its most sizable of all three days of competition. Hu, who had twice finished fifth at this event in recent years, finally got his sought after home medal after 68 seconds of added time as Hong was penalised for dropping to keep the medal in China.