Artem Lesiuk claims first Judo World Tour gold

At the first day of the Grand Slam in Tel Aviv there was a big clear out in the U60kg category, since none of the favourites of the competition were found in the final. The first qualified athlete was Bauyrzhan Narbayev (KAZ), without reference on the World Judo Tour. In front of him stood a Ukrainian who placed seventh at the Tokyo Olympic Games, Artem Lesiuk.

The first strong action came from Artem Lesiuk with a powerful soto-makikomi but the landing was less than 90° and so there was no score. This was then a repetition in the next attack, this time scoring ippon to give the victory to Lesiuk, after what must be called a really beautiful day of judo.

The first match for a bronze medal was between Tornike Tsjakadoea (NED) and Tsogt-Ochir Byambajav (MGL), another really close match where neither athlete seemed able to find even the tiniest opportunity to throw, until almost two minutes into golden score. That's the moment Tsogt-Ochir Byambajav chose to drop under his opponent’s centre of gravity with a sumi-gaeshi that he controlled all the way through to waza-ari and a clean and clear victory.

In the second match for bronze, Magzhan Shamshadin (KAZ) and the number one seed Karamat Huseynov (AZE) faced off for a place on the podium. Huseynov was however  unable to take part and so Shamshadin took the contest to win the bronze medal.