One year later Kanikovskiy is back with Grand Slam gold

Matvey Kanikovskiy and Dzhafar Kostoev agreed on a fast-paced match in the final of the Grand Slam in Kazakhstan. Both producing the first score inside 30 seconds, an o-uchi-gari from Kanikovskiy. Seoi-nage, ura-nage, a variety of ash-waza, makikomi and more all featured but it was eventually a second waza-ari from Kanikovskiy with a tomoe-nage that settled things, Kostoev having no choice but to accept the silver. Kanikovskiy is back after a year when he won the Grand Slam of Ulaanbaatar.

Kostoev, without the CV of Nikiforov, made lighter work of it and ran to his semi-final notching up score after score along the way. He threw Frey (GER) for waza-ari and ippon in less than three minutes and Kumric (CRO) for two waza-ari in a relentless onslaught that left even Kumric with no doubt about who the winner would be.

In the semi-final, despite his relaxed appearance on the tatami, he never looked willing to give even an inch, confidently controlling every grip. At almost half time he accelerated, turning into Saduakas (KAZ) with an unexpectedly low ashi-guruma and walked into the next exchange with a waza-ari lead. The very next grip was from the Kazakh who aimed to dominate over the shoulder but Kostoev was ready and picked him up with a huge ura-nage to double his score and move into the final.

Saduakas dropped down to fight for bronze, meeting his teammate Bozbayev in the final block, meaning the home team would end the tournament with a medal on day 3, no matter what. Bozbayev threw well in the preliminaries and seemed to be enjoying the home crowd support. He continued in that vein in the bronze medal contest, throwing his teammate for ippon in exactly a minute, with a right-handed uchi-mata.

The second bronze medal was to be decided by Nikiforov and Kumric, with the Belgian needing a boost in spirit to regain his composure from the start of the day, so disappointed with his semi-final result. Kumric came out like a steam-train with attacks and hard gripping from the beginning. With just over a minute gone though, Nikiforov spun underneath him and scored waza-ari with a semi-nage. It wasn’t enough! Kumric didn’t change his attitude and kept the pressure on and just 20 seconds after the Belgian had scored he flew in with a beautifully controlled ashi-guruma for ippon.