Elmar Gasimov grabs the gold medal in Tashkent

Being the current Olympic Silver medallist and top seeded competitor, it was not a surprise to find Elmar Gasimov (AZE) in the final of the Grand Prix in Tashkent U100kg. But as we announced in the preview of the category, this could be the day of Alexandre Iddir, as the Frenchman went through the preliminary rounds with a very solid and spectacular judo.

With his left-handed guard the first in action was Iddir who was very close to put Gasimov out of balance. Being more passive, the Azeri was penalized with a first shido. Iddir seemed to be in control of the match, when the Olympic Silver medallist engaged a sumi-gaeshi from a distance. The French had no other choice than to follow and after landing on his head, finished flat on his back for ippon.

The 2015 Junior European Champion Danilo Pantic (MNE) was opposed to Veteran Ramadan Darwish (EGY), who was already a world bronze medallist in 2009, in Rotterdam. In less than 10 seconds, there were already two strong attacks, one with an uchi-mata from Darwish and a counter attack by Pantic, but both for no score. That would definitely be the physiognomy of the match, the Egyptian attacking and the Montenegrin trying to counter. Just after the half of the match, Darwish took the advantage with a hip technique for waza-ari. With less than one minute on the scoreboard, the first penalties were distributed to both competitors for passivity and Darwish just had to control until the final gong to win his twelfth medal on a Grand Prix.

Hard time for the 2015 World silver medallist, who has to struggle to get back to his best level. But Karl-Richard Frey (GER) is stil present in a final block of a World Judo Tour event as he qualified for the bronze medal contest against the owner of two Grand Slam bronze medals (Abu Dhabi 2016, Baku 2015), Joakim Dvarby (SWE). After one minute and 27 seconds, the German was penalized with a first shido for passivity. As the last minute was approaching, a shido was awarded to both athletes but it was still the Swede who was the most dangerous, first with a kata-guruma, then with a o-soto-gari that was very close to score. On the final gong, Frey launched a desperate drop-semi-nage, but once again, nothing was announced by the referee. In Golden score, a confused action was uncertain for a little while until the video confirmed that once more nothing was scored. Finally after 1 minute and 19 seconds, Frey scored an aerial ippon with a massive ura-nage for his thirteenth Grand Prix Medal.