Matthias Casse won the bronze medal in the -81 kg category on Tuesday at the Tokyo Olympics. The 24-year-old Belgian judoka, world champion and world No.1, defeated Georgian Tato Grigalshvili (IJF 3) on ippon in the fight for the bronze medal.
By beating his opponent, Matthias Casse won the second Belgian medal at the Tokyo Games after Wout van Aert’s silver on Saturday in the road cycling race, and the 150th Belgian medal in history at the Summer Games.
Matthias Casse, who is playing his first Games, had to fight hard to reach the semi-final. After taking out Puerto Rican Adrian Gandia (IJF 33) and Swedish Robin Pacek (IJF 28) in golden score, he beat Russian Alan Khubetsov (IJF 8) on penalties in the quarter-finals.
In the semi-finals, the Antwerp player lost to waza-ari with the golden score in the semi-finals against the Japanese Takanori Nagase, 13th in the world and bronze medal at the Rio Games in 2016. The Antwerp player then got back on the tatami mat to get the 14th Olympic medal in Belgian judo, the 10th in bronze.
Since the appearance of judo on the Games program in 1964, only Robert Vande Walle in 1980 in Moscow, Ingrid Berghmans in 1988 in Seoul and Ulla Werbrouck in 1996 in Atlanta have climbed to the top step of the podium. Note that in 1988, women’s judo was a demonstration sport.
