Fran Garrigós, from Famu, achieves his first world gold in Doha

The judoka from Famu de Frutos Fran Garrigós achieved yesterday in Doha his first gold medal in a World Championship by beating the Uzbek Dilshodbek Baratov in the final of the category of up to 60 kilos.

Garrigós is since yesterday the fourth Spaniard to be proclaimed world champion in judo, joining Miriam Blasco (1991), Isabel Fernández (1997) and fellow Famu athlete Niko Sherazadishvili (2018 and 2021). In this way, Galicia already has two judo world champions.

The 28-year-old athlete from Mostola and twice European champion (2021 and 2022), won the final with a ‘waza-ari’ against Baratov with 41 seconds left in the golden score (‘golden score’).

To access the final, the Famu judoka beat the current Olympic champion and four-time world champion, Naohisa Takato. An ‘ippon’ against the Japanese put him in the fight for gold.

Before those last steps, he had successively beaten the Italian Angelo Pantano, the South Korean Jeon Seung-beom and, already in the quarterfinals, the Georgian Giorgi Sardalashvili. This is the greatest success of Garrigós’ career, who won bronze at the 2021 Budapest World Cups.

In continental championships, the man from Madrid with a Galician license treasured, in addition to his two titles, in 2021 and 2022, a silver in Minsk in 2019 and two bronzes in Warsaw 2017 and Prague 2020.

With his victory yesterday at the Doha World Cup, Fran Garrigós has 2,000 points in the Olympic ranking ahead of the 2024 Paris Games, an appointment he will arrive at with extraordinary confidence after winning consecutive European and world titles .

The Famu athlete will try to add to these successes achieved in recent months an Olympic medal in the Parisian event next year.

On Sunday, Laura Martínez Abelenda and Mireia Lapuerta Comas did not have the same luck, both eliminated in the second round in the -48 kilos category. For today Monday there is still the competition of Alberto Gaitero and David García in -66 kilos and Ana Pérez Box and Ana López Sheriff in -52 kilos.