Shido play part of the strategy for Teddy Riner

Teddy Riner made his first IJF World Tour appearance in over half a year, at the Paris Grand Slam. The much-anticipated match-up against Guram Tushishvili (GEO) never happened, as Tushishvili was eliminated by Hyoga Ota (JPN) in the preliminary rounds. Riner had a relatively easy ride to the semifinal. He dispatched his first opponent, Azamat Chotchaev (BRN) with uchimata-makikomi in just 28 seconds.

Next, he threw Adil Orazbayev (KAZ) with uchimata, a throw that has been largely missing from his repertoire for some time. But this time, it was a good one. In executing this big technique, he almost looked like the Riner of yesteryear.

He had a slightly harder time with Dzhamal Gamzatkhanov (AZE), who pushed him into Golden Score. There, Riner scored with an opportunistic osoto-gari when his opponent was on his knees.

Riner pushed to the limit by the much-smaller Alisher Yusupov (UZB), who actually threw Riner with a yoko-guruma that was initially given a waza-ari. But since it was done as a bear hug, the scored was cancelled and Yusupov got a shido. To win the match, Riner pulled Yusupov’s head down and forced him to incur his third and final shido. This was a strategy he would employ in the final as well.

Needless to say, the final was a let-down as Riner played it safe and resorted to the kind of shido-play he was known to do against tough opponents. Not once but three times he pulled Ota’s head down and caused the Japanese fighter to incur penalties. There were only two big attacks in the whole fight, and both came for Ota. Yet, he was the one who was disqualified because he allowed his opponent to pull his head down.

It was not a very satisfactory final but Riner never cared about such things. His objective was to win and if he has to resort to shido play to achieve it, he is happy to do so. The crowd eats out of his hands and the man is beyond the sport of judo.

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