Kenya Kohara rushes to fourth Japanese gold

The U81kg category at the Grand Slam in Ulaanbaatar began with a thunderclap. Top seed Matthias Casse (BEL) could imagine a first warm-up contest and that's nothing pejorative, it's just some form of logic and reality on the ground, but in this case it was a reality of paper only because the first round of the day for Casse did not seem too easy against the Japanese Kenya Kohara.

Pointing to 42nd place in the world, the latter is still the last winner of the Tokyo Grand Slam. Unfortunately for Matthias Casse, this tricky first round proved deadly, as he was eliminated by Kohara, who then rushed to the final.

To win the gold medal, Kohara had another big name in the category to face, since his opponent was Joonhwan Lee (KOR), winner here last year during the first edition of the grand slam and who went through the morning session with relative ease.

The final looked really balanced, with the feeling that at any point it could go to one side or the other. The waza-ari scored by Kohara looked for a moment to be suspended in the air and it could have gone either way but in the end the hand and food control of the Japanese judoka was perfect. Joonhwan Lee launched his last forces in the battle but could not prevent Japan from winning their fourth gold medal of the day.

The first match for a bronze medal was between Abylaikhan Zhubanazar (KAZ) and Bolor-Ochir Gereltuya (MGL), the medal being awarded to Abylaikhan Zhubanazar after scoring a waza-ari.

Attila Ungvari (HUN), who showed great things and total commitment in the morning, found himself facing Alan Khubetsov (AIN) to win the second bronze medal but against Khubetsov, Ungvari didn't manage to score and was penalised three times, the last being for stepping out of the tatami. The bronze medal went to Alan Khubetsov.