Lkhagvasuren Otgonbaatar reaches career best in VAE

World number 13 Lkhagvasuren Otgonbaatar of Mongolia won his first Grand Slam gold medal to move towards the summit of the U90kg category and at 22 years old could be a mainstay among the elite. The Ulaanbaatar Grand Prix winner Lkhagvasuren defeated the returning World Judo Masters bronze medallist Noel Van ‘t End of the Netherlands who was the top seed on his return to action from injury.

Lkhagvasuren, who took bronze a fortnight ago in Paris, was penalised for a false attack and then for an overly defensive posture which Van ‘t End was also guilty of and was reprimanded. Van ‘t End picked up a shido for a false attack before the young Mongolian threw for ippon with a picturesque morote-seoi-nage. Lkhagvasuren then gave a double thumbs up to his teammates in the crowd who stood up and applauded their peer’s achievement. 

In the first semi-final former world silver medallist Toth Krisztian (HUN) lost out to Lkhagvasuren 2:3 on shido penalties while Van ‘t End defeated Ilias Iliadis after close to two minutes of golden score by a shido for passivity at the same stage.

The first bronze medal was awarded to Toth who surpassed Samsun Grand Prix silver medallist Aleksandar Kukolj (SRB) to win the first medal on day three. Toth was penalised with a shido for going out after 40 seconds before Kukolj received a shido for passivity to restore level terms. With 44 seconds left and golden score looking likely, the Hungarian countered an attack from his opponent for waza-ari and that was enough for bronze. The second bronze medal went to the hard-working Marcus Nyman (SWE) who defeated Greek legend Iliadis to win his first Grand Slam medal. Both judoka were penalised for not taking a grip after 36 seconds before Iliadis was penalised again for the same offence. Nyman failed with repeated sumi-gaeshi attempts and then his workrate decreased which resulted in a shido for passivity. Iliadis finally found his mark with just under two minutes left as he drove Nyman down to the tatami with a osoto-gari for a yuko. Iliadis was penalised twice more with the fourth shido coming for going out of the area and received hansoku-make.