Slovenian Adrian Gomboc takes gold in Tashkent

Adrian Gomboc showed he is back on track with a gold medal at the Grand Prix in Tashkent. He takes precious points and in Uzbekistan he defeated Uzbek home player Sardor Nurillaev against the number five of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and this year's European Champion. After a minute of observation, the first strong attack came from Nurillaev, with a drop-seoi-nage, which made the public immediately react, but for no score.

A minute later, the Uzbek again launched a powerful uchi-mata, but for the same result... nothing to be written on the scoreboard, but enough for Gomboc to be penalized with a first shido for passivity. As the last minute started, with a strong arm technique, the Slovenian scored a waza-ari to win the gold medal.

With the first bronze medal contest, Shakhram Akhadov was in the position to offer a third medal to the host country on day one of the Grand Prix in Tashkent as he was opposed to Ismail Chasygov (RUS). But halfway to the end, he had already been penalized twice for passivity, being condemned to score. But as the match was getting close to an ending, the Russian was also penalized twice for false attacks. The golden score was to decide between the two competitors. Everything was still possible. The public could feel that their competitor needed support and they offered it to him. Akhadov multiplied the attacks to force Chasygov to be logically penalized for the third time.

The second bronze medal contest opposed Dovdon Altansukh (MGL) and Nijat Shikhalizada (AZE). Despite being very close to scoring, Dovdon, was always behind in terms of attacks and therefore was penalized twice as both athletes reached the end of the bout. Once again the golden score would decide the winner and it took only five seconds for Shikhalizada to score a superb ippon to end up with the bronze medal.