Teddy Riner remains undefeated in Qingdao

After five Paris Grand Slam victories and last year's victory in Jeju, Teddy Riner added a third city where he won the gold in the IJF World Tour. In the men’s heavyweight of course all the focus was on the eight-time world champion, Teddy Riner. Still undefeated since 2010, the French colossus seems to fight on another planet and most of his contenders tried not to be thrown for ippon rather than to really to challenge today’s judo legend.

In the final, he was opposed to Kim Sung-Min, who had never won against Riner but who is one of his most well-known opponents. After 45 seconds KIM totally dominated by the strong grip of Riner, was penalised a first time for passivity and again 30 seconds later. A third shido was given to the Korean before the French was able to really apply a first sumi-gaeshi technique but for no score. Outrageously dominating, it did not take long for the fourth penalty to be given to Kim, offering the victory to RINER, who remains totally unchallenged.

The first bronze medal fight opposed Oleksandr Gordiienko (UKR), silver medallist in Budapest last June, and Abdulov Aituar (KAZ), who was not among the favourites of the competition this morning. After a little less than two minutes, Gordiienko, much taller than his opponent, launched a huge uchi-mata, for yuko. The Ukrainian confirmed his advantage a little later with exactly the same technique for the same result. The third attempt was a good one as Gordiienko scored ippon again with uchi-mata.

The second bronze medal saw Ueda Katsuma (JPN) and Sven Heinle (GER) opposed for the last position of the podium. Ueda scored the first waza-ari with a soto-makikomi technique, which he immediately followed with an immobilisation, but Heinle showed effort to escape from the hold, before the 10 seconds synonymous of a minimum of yuko. Despite a few penalties, the score remained unchanged and Ueda added another medal to the Japanese basket already pretty full in Qingdao.