Super Shavdatuashvili shows his class at home

London 2012 Olympic champion and Rio 2016 Olympic bronze medallist Lasha Shavdatuashvili of Georgia started as the top seed at the Grand Prix in Tbilisi and came through five testing contests to win his third Grand Prix title. World number five Shavdatuashvili won four of his five contests by ippon and was the crowd favourite on day two.

Former Tbilisi Grand Prix bronze medallist Phridon Gigani, also from Georgia was appearing in a Grand Prix final for the first time and struggled to live with his dangerous teammate as he accumulated not one or two but three shidos and was disqualified. The last shido was for hitting off the grip of his compatriot as Shavdatuashvili showed that he is Georgia’s leading man at U73kg.  

In the first semi-final Shavdatuashvili beat world number 20 Sam Van ‘t Westende (NED) to take his expected place in the final. The home star swept his Dutch opponent to the ground with a de-ashi-barai and followed up with osaekomi for 10 seconds to the adulation of the crowd. In the second semi-final Gigani dramatically defeated Hohhot Grand Prix bronze medallist Mohammad Mohammadi (IRI) with a buzzer-beating modified kata-guruma for ippon to guarantee Georgia the gold medal at U73kg.

The first bronze medal was won by 20-year-old former Junior European bronze medallist Nils Stump (SUI) who only made his IJF World Judo Tour debut in January with a seventh-place finish at the Tunis Grand Prix. Stump thwarted Mohammadi to win by a waza-ari score and earn his first medal on the IJF World Judo Tour. The youngster is the seventh Swiss judoka in history to win an IJF World Judo Tour honour.

The second bronze medal went to Van  ‘t Westende who defeated Georgii Shmakov (RUS) in a battle between two judoka who were aiming to grace an IJF podium for the first time. That distinction went to the Dutchman who came from being a waza-ari behind to score two of his own for bronze. Shmakov only debuted on the circuit in January in Tunisia and showed his inexperience at this level when he was caught on two occasions with osoto-gari and Van  ‘t  Westende could celebrate a career first.