Japanese Ryunosuke Haga takes the world title U100kg

Ryunosuke Haga of Japan steps into the footlight of his coach Keiji Suzuki who won the world title in 2005. The 24-year athlete is the fourth Japanese to take the world title U100kg after Kosei Inoue in 1999, 2001 and 2003, Suzuki in 2005 and Takamasa Anai in 2010. Haga defeated five opponents to get into the final.

The final between Karl Richard Frey and Ryuonusuke Haga was not the best but a tactical match by Haga. With two penalties for Frey, Haga took the sixth world title for Japan. Who would have thought that from Haga who wasn’t expected to take a medal at all, but at least he was an outsider. For Karl-Richard Frey it was a terrific achievement to take silver and beat the World Champion Lukas Krpalek in the semi final with great judo.

Haga won the Universiade in Shenzhen (Student World Championships) in 2011. Won the World Junior Championships U20 in 2010 in Agadir. In 2015 he won the Grand Prix in Dusseldorf. Karl-Richard Frey started his career as European Junior Champion in 2010 and won European U23 bronze in 2012. From that moment his career lifted with Grand Prix victories in Rijeka and Qingdao in 2013. Frey reached the world top 3 due to his 10 World Cup medals. The highlight so far was World Championships bronze in 2014 but the silver, despite the last lost match is his best ever medal at world level, also it's a good leap to qualification for Rio 2016 in competition with Dimitri Peters. 

Dimitri Peters won the bronze for Germany. The Germans always strike at the last day and today is not different. Three medals anyway for Germany, that was the aim. In the last match for bronze Peters countered Krpalek when he tried to hook Dimitri Peters with a ko-soto-gari. Krpalek went flat on his back and the firdst Waza-ari got changed to ippon and bronze for Peters, his second after Rio 2013. Last year Frey was the only medallist for Germany in the team. In 2013 the men won two medals the women three.

The second medal contest between Cyrille Maret and Toma Nikiforov was an amazing match. The Belgium sensation of today couldn’t play decent judo, with his injured left hand he couldn’t seriously hold his opponent. He couldn’t do anything but waiting for a mistake of his opponent and steer with his other hand. Nikiforov got three penalties and he tookover Maret stumbling with a bad attempt to throw the Belgium 35 seconds for the end. Six seconds for the end he got the vibe and scored with a maki-komi for an impossible victory. He saves the Belgian team and reputation and takes a medal, that’s one more than last year. What a sensational performance of the Belgian strong man. 

Toma Nikiforov is one of Belgium’s best judoka of his generation. He won European Games silver in 2015. He won three European Junior medals and World Junior silver in 2013. He won his first Grand Prix in Havana in Cuba in 2014 and many big medals followed, but today he won by far his most important and he saved his country for a second clean sheet.