Yeldos Smetov earns crown on his career

Yeldos Smetov was one of the serious contenders for gold in Paris 2024. He was after all, a former World Champion and a double Olympic medalist. He’s also a former Asian Games champion and has won seven gold medals in the IJF World Tour. But at 31 years of age and unseeded at No. 22, he was past his prime.

There were many younger players who were considered better prospects and one of them, Yang Yung Wei from Taiwan, was in his pool. It was inevitable that they would battle each other to top the pool.

Yeldos’s first opponent was the Dutch player Tornike Tsjakadoea, who gave him quite a hard time. Smetov couldn’t throw him and ended up relying on penalties to get through to the next round. Against Dilshot Khalmatov of Ukraine, he did better, scoring a waza-ari with a counter against a forward throw.

That win brought Smetov up against Yang, who had a bit of a scare in his first match, against Andrea Carlino of Italy, who at one point was ahead of Yang with a waza-ari but eventually succumbed to two sankaku hold-downs for waza-ari-awasete-ippon.

Smetov managed to throw Yang with a fantastic uchimata off the ground. It scored only a waza-ari but try as he might, Yang could not even up the scores. With that, Smetov was through to the semifinal, where he faced the 2023 World Champion Fracisco Garrigos of Spain.

Theirs was a tough battle which was ultimately decided on the ground. Garrigos is generally considered to be the better newaza player but surprisingly, it was Smetov who won the newaza exchange, catching Garrigos with a very unusual strangle from underneath. It was a bit of a surprise for the fans to see Garrigos lose by a strangle because he had spectacularly strangled Ryuju Nagayama of Japan earlier.

The final was expected to be a tactical match as both Smetov and Luka Mkheidze of France were both well familiar with tactical play. Perhaps energized and spurred on by the home crowd, Mkheidze went full steam ahead, attacking non-stop. Smetov soon found himself down by two shidos, and in danger of being disqualified. 

Mkheidze liked doing sacrifice throws and in one early exchange, Smetov managed to kill the technique and slam Mkheidze to the mat. No score was given. When it happened a second time, towards the end of the match, the referee asked for the video panel to review the action, and it was decided a waza-ari should be scored. After that, Smetov just killed time until the clock ran out. Nine years after he had become World Champion, Smetov was finally Olympic champion as well.