Great technical skills by Stanislav Semenov to win gold

One year after his last victory in Antalya it was Stanislav Semenov who captured the gold U81kg. For the very last final of the second day at the Grand Prix in Tunis Vedat Albayrak of Turkey faced Semenov. Albayrak switched country for a second time. He was born in Georgia, moved to Greece where we all know him as Roman Moustopoulos and now switched to Turkey where he was immediately successful with a final.

In that final in Tunis Semenov was penalized a first time for escaping from the grip of his opponent. It was the turn of the Turkish athlete to be penalized for holding the judogi on the same side. Suddenly, Semenov took a strong lead as he beautifully countered Albayrak's sase-tsuri-komi-ashi with a sumi-otoshi technique for waza-ari. Less than 20 seconds to the end, the Russian concluded with a nice combination from tachi-waza to ne-waza to immobilize Albayrak for ippon.

Dominik Druzeta (CRO), bronze medallist at the European Championships last year and Kohara Kenya (JPN), Baku Grand Slam 2017 bronze medallist, were opposed for a place on the podium of the first event of the year. After less than 30 seconds Druzeta was penalised with a first shido and less than 10 seconds later was thrown by Kohara with a tremendous o-soto-gari for ippon. It is the first medal at a Grand Prix for Kohara.

The last bronze medal contest of the day opposed Eduardo Yudy Santos (BRA) and the second Japanese of the category Yamamoto Yuji (JPN). Within a few seconds, Santos surprised Yamamoto of Tenri University with a ken ken o-uchi-gari for a ippon that was transformed into a waza-ari. As the match went on, Santos was then penalized with the shido, but that was not enough to change the physiognomy of the final result and the Brazilian won the bronze, a first medal for him at that level of competition.