Celio Dias fearless attitude helped him with Grand Prix miracle

Celio Dias of Portugal was the not expected surprising winner of the category U90kg at the Grand Prix of Budapest. The flexible but ultimately strong Portuguese is hard to fight with his strong grip and powerful athletic body. But a final and even the gold was more than a surprise. Learning from other top athletes he went fearless into today's competition going for the biggest success in his career.

celebrated the first IJF gold medal of his burgeoning career as Buenos Aires Pan American Open silver medallist Romain Buffet (FRA) fell at the final stage. Buffet, who took silver at 2011 Dusseldorf Grand Prix, received a shido for passivity after Dias attacked with a weak tomoe-nage. The Portuguese fighter scored a waza-ari from an osoto-gari and the leggy youngster almost scored with the same technique just seconds later. 

The Casablanca Open winner of this year said: “It feels just amazing to win my first IJF gold medal. I have had some slight injury problems recently so to come back today and achieve this makes me really happy.

“For me this result is just the beginning. On Saturday I was looking for extra inspiration and I found something that Serena Williams said ‘You have to be fearless to succeed’ and this was on my mind today. I will now turn my attention to competing at the European Games in Baku.”

Starting the day ranked at number 33 on the IJF WRL Dias showed little sign of nerves in his opening contest against China’s CHENG Xunzhao whom he defeated by ippon. In the first semi-final Dias, who beat Olympic silver medallist Asley Gonzalez (CUB) in the quarter-final after the latter was disqualified for a leg grab, dismissed former Samsun Grand Prix silver medallist Marc Odenthal (GER) with a thunderous drop seoi-nage.

Early in the quarter-final Gonzalez had a stroke of bad luck when he reacted to a Dias attack by grabbing the leg of the Portuguese, resulting in hansokumake for the Cuban. DIAS then threw again with right-sided ippon seoi nage for ippon to end the contest and take his place in the final. Romain Buffet of France had come through on the side of the draw to face Dias. But the Portuguese had his throwing skills in fine order for the last contest of the day and came up with a left o soto gari that brought Buffet down for waza ari. That single score was enough to take the gold medal. This win improves the chances for Dias to qualify for Rio 2016. If the Portuguese needs any inspiration he may do well to take on board the saying “What you do today determines your tomorrows.” I’m not sure to whom this should be attributed. But Dias will probably discover this soon enough.

“I knew the draw a few days ago and was anxious when I saw my possible opponents. But on the day of the competition it helps to motivate me when I have to face fighters such as Gonzalez” said DIAS. 

The first bronze medal was won by 2013 world champion Gonzalez who emerged victorious against Prague European Open bronze medallist Milan Randl (SVK). The number one seed from Cuba scored a yuko from a tai-otoshi and added a waza-ari to take full control of the contest and with it the destiny of the bronze medal. The second bronze medal was captured by 20-year-old newcomer Li Kochman (ISR) against beaten semi-finalist Odenthal. Kochman was aiming for the first IJF medal of his career and delivered exactly that after a lively encounter which started with a waza-ari score for the youngster. Kochman then countered with a ko-soto-gake and as the German stepped back the Israeli fighter followed up with osoto-gari for the maximum score.