The miracle of Yeldos Smetov

In most Olympics, there are surprise winners. Sometimes, it's totally unexpected and a total unknown wins. For example, in the 2016 Rio Olympics, very few people had at the time heard of Fabio Basile of Italy but he unexpectedly became the Olympic Champion at -66kg, defeating one of the favorites, An Baul of South Korea, in the final. Today is his birthday.

Sometimes, there is an upset but not a major one, where the top favorite doesn't win but someone well known does. An example of this was when Mansur Isaev of Russia defeated his rivals (both more favored to win) Wang Ki-chun of South Korea and Riki Nakaya of Japan, to win gold.

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, there was no major upset. Nobody completely unknown or even relatively unknown made it to the top. But there were a few surprise victories. You could say three of the gold medalists were not the top prospects. We start by looking at Yeldos Smetov of Kazakhstan in the -60kg division.

Smetov is far from being an unknown. He is a former World Champion (2015) and also won World bronzes in 2019 and 2022. But at 31, he was considered to be past his prime. At the 2024 World's he did not medal (although he did place a creditable 5th).

He has also been a remarkably steady presence at the Olympics, having gotten silver in 2016 and bronze in 2021. And now, he has added gold to his collection, making him a rare judoka who has a medal of every color. Other players with that rare distinction are Angelo Parisi (FRA), Ryoko Tani (JPN), Kye Sun Hui (PRK), Driulis Gonzalez (CUB), Lasha Shavdatuashvili (GEO), and Idalys Ortiz (CUB).

In Paris, Yeldos's first major obstacle was the No. 1 ranking player, Yang Yung Wei of Taiwan, whom Smetov threw with an unusual uchimata off the ground. That brought him up against the tough Spanish fighter, Francisco Garrigos of Spain, the 2023 World Champion. Smetov beat him on the ground, choking him with an unusual strangle from underneath. It was a bit of a surprise for the fans to see Garrigos lose by a strangle because he, himself, 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, the referee asked for the video panel to review the action, and it was decided a waza-ari should be given. With not much time left, Smetov just killed time until the clock ran out. Nine years after he had become World Champion, Smetov was finally Olympic champion as well.