Noel van 't End seems to be building his best year ever

Dutchman Noel Van ‘t End is definitely in shape winning the Grand Slam in Paris and this time in Antalya. He is first of all a former world champion, who then went through a bad patch before returning in full possession of his capacity in Paris this year, a tournament which he won very well at the beginning of February. With the approach of the World Judo Championships - Doha 2023, it bodes very well for Van 't End.

The last two significant results from Alex Cret (ROU) are two seventh places at the Warsaw Continental Open this season and in 2022 at the Prague Junior Open. Let's not forget that Cret is the holder of a bronze medal in a grand prix as well, won in Portugal in 2022. All this is to say that he was really not one of the favourites of the day and yet, after elimination phases fantastically conducted, Cret qualified for the final where 29 seconds were enough for Van ‘t End to propel Cret over his shoulders with a fantastic seoi-nage. The gold for Van ‘t End puts him in a position to look at the next world championships. Cret is young, he still has a lot to learn, but today was definitely a big step up in his career.

Peter Zilka (SVK) and Artem Bubyr (UKR), who both had excellent preliminaries even though they could not make it to the final, came together to play out the first match for a bronze medal. If the massive uchi-mata was expected from Peter Zilka, it was actually Artem Bukyr who produced the effort to score with a flying uchi-mata for ippon. This is the first medal at that level for the 2021 junior world bronze medallist. This morning he was pointing at a far off 125th place in the world. No doubt he will gain some ranking here. 

Ivaylo Ivanov (BUL) believed for a long time that he could reach the final, before losing to Cret. He still had a chance to reach the podium against Roland Goz (HUN). As we passed the halfway mark there was just a shido apiece written on the scoreboard. The main attack came from Ivanov right after the final gong and was therefore not counted. The time for golden score has arrived. After 25 seconds of extra time, the same Ivanov dropped under his opponent's centre of gravity with a nicely executed kata-guruma to take the victory and the medal.

Of the top seven oldest winners at a Turkish Grand Slam or Grand Prix, five achieved it at this edition in Antalya. Rafaela Silva (30), Noel van ‘t End (31), Audrey Tcheumeo (32), Kayra Sayit (35) and recordholder in Turkey Keyleyn Quadros who will turn 36 this year. Only Marius Paskevicius was older than Van 't End in 2014 in Samsun as oldest male winner in Turkey.