Martti Puumalainen jumps to place 6 from 16 in the ranks

Finnish sensation Martti Puumalainen jumped to place 6 in the IJF World Ranking after his gold medal at the World Masters in Budapest. The Finnish heavyweight was ranked 16th last week and captured 1800 points with his victory. Puumalainen became the first Scandinavian athlete to win the World Masters. The heavyweight ranking is still led by Temur Rakhimov (TJK) who lost the final to Puumalainen. He is now among the virtual seeded players at the Olympic Games.

Ryuju Nagayama regained his number one position in the IJF Word Ranking after his victory U60kg in Budapest. Last week he was ranked seventh and is now leading with 1 point difference to Balabay Aghayev. Lee Ha-rim is now third, he was the leader until Friday.

Ryoma Tanaka made the biggest jump of all coming from 31 last week and now being positioned at the twelfth place U66kg after winning in Budapest. Vieru who lost the final, is dominantly leading.

U73kg winner Soichi Hashimoto moved from 8 to 2 this week, just behind Hidayet Heydarov of Azerbaijan.

Matthias Casse and Tato Grigalashvili remain the two undisputed leaders U81kg. Grigalashvili is still leading with 9625 points, followed by Belgian Casse with 9105 points in the ranking.

The Georgians are strong anyway in the ranking. U90kg both the world champion Maisuradze as the Olympic champion Bekauri determine the top ranks. World Champion Maisuradze who lost to the golden backpatch in Budapest is still ranked number one.

Georgia has another leader, Ilia Sulamanidze is still highest ranked in U100kg with quite a gap to Zelym Kotsoiev (AZE). Budapest winner Turoboyev is now at 6.