Chloé Buttigieg wins her second Grand Prix medal.
Crédit photo : Tamara Kulumbegashvili/IJF
So the first two – and only – French medals will have been obtained during the last final block of this Portuguese Grand Prix. The work of Chloé Buttigieg in -78kg and Coralie Hayme in +78kg. During their fight for bronze, the first place was an opportunistic and unstoppable juji-gatame to the Croatian Karla Prodan who let her right arm drag on an action on the edge. Second Grand Prix medal after Tunis in 2018 for the RSC Montreuil Judo judoka who only lost this Sunday to the future gold medalist, the German Anna-Monta Olek.
The second, from JC Maisons-Alfort, won her first medal on the circuit since silver at the Masters in December 2022. A victory on penalties after 4’28 of golden score against the Korean Hayun Kim. The French junior world champion in 2021 who only bites the dust against the Japanese Miki Mikinuki, vice world junior champion last October.
Two podiums like a big sigh of relief while France still had not opened its counter on Saturday evening. A Portuguese Grand Prix in which Max Laborde (Dojo Béglais) is the only French male to place, the Béglais finishing seventh in -90kg yesterday. A very meager record.
Among the women, four ranked with Ophélie Vellozzi (fifth in -57kg), Lucie Jarrot (seventh in -70kg) and the two fighters mentioned above for fifteenth place in the medal rankings. Paris is coming next week. The opportunity to move on very quickly to something else after this Portuguese event, certainly very dense for this level of competition but whose overall French result is disappointing.
They came with their best team or almost. Expected, they did not disappoint. With two titles on Friday evening, the Russians still had their best cards up their sleeve this Sunday with the -100g and +100kg. Two categories in which they have both a world champion (Arman Adamian and Inal Tasoev) and experience fierce and indecisive competition in view of the Olympics. A not exceptional situation – this is the case of Canada in -57kg and Georgia in -90kg -.
Will yesterday’s results have clarified this configuration? Possible. In -100kg, world champion Adamian comes through, like in Tokyo at the beginning of December. If he is beaten by the young prodigy Dota Arai in Japan on a magnificent harai-goshi, this Sunday, the overpowering but fine world champion in the category is totally surprised this Sunday by the Cypriot Georgios Kroussanotakis, 24 years old, 77th in the world , three medals including two victories in the Continental Open to his list. An attack launched with a bad balance and here was the Cypriot who pinned Adamian to the ground and kept him immobilized.
A Cypriot fighter who had already created a surprise in the first round by defeating the Japanese Kotaro Ueoka!
An unwelcome setback for Adamian since at the same time, his compatriot Matvey Kanikovskiy continues, quietly, to win everything. Gold at the Tokyo Grand Slam at the end of 2023, this twenty-two-year-old judoka, tall, with a nonchalant air and the body language of a pure cold-blooded animal, won this Sunday, perpetuating an absolutely breathtaking dynamic. Five Grand Slams contested: three victories and two silver medals. Two Grands Prix contested for two titles. Totally crazy statistics with two fights lost since June 2022 out of seven contested competitions (four Grand Slams, two Grand Prix and the 2023 European Championships). Adept at leg movements, the boy has a rich and fine palette like this variation of sumi-otoshi placed on the Spaniard Nikoloz Sherazadishvili on a cross guard in the final. A judoka who fits completely into the performance logics now perfectly identified since he was European champion and 2021 junior world medalist. The dynamic is clearly on his side for a tenure in Paris.
Same analysis for Inal Tasoev who won in +100kg. Better still, he beat his compatriot Tamerlan Bashaev in the semi-final with a golden score uki-waza before placing a superb uchi-mata on the Korean Minjong Kim in the final after only twenty-seven seconds. A Korean who beat him in Tokyo in the quarter-finals two months ago. We suspect that Tasoev wanted to wash away the affront. And it’s done in a damn beautiful way. Not selected for the Tokyo Olympics, the judoka from Valdikavkaz has been doing everything since then to be the one who will be in Paris at the end of July. Before the Tokyo Grand Slam, his last defeat dates back to the Doha Masters in 2021 where he was beaten by… Teddy Riner. Since then, the 2023 world champion, whose exclusive interview you can find before the Paris Olympics, has won everything except his little slip in Japan at the beginning of December, where he still finished in bronze.
This weekend Kanikovskiy and Tasoev took a big option. Decisive? Hard to say. Significant? Without a doubt.
A Sunday where Turkey also won two titles with the experience of Mihael Zgank in -90kg and the youth of Hilal Ozturk in +78kg. Youth victory also for the German Anna Monta Olek in -78kg. A new face in this category carefully cultivated for years and years by judo from across the Rhine. Twenty-one years old, 19th in the world, this 2021 junior world champion is already positioning herself as a contender with a view to Los Angeles 2028, Paris 2024 being either for Anna Maria Wagner or for Alina Boehm (European champion in Montpellier). The future is already being prepared now.
2024-01-29 08:56:48
#Portuguese #Grand #Prix #Buttigieg #Hayme #bronze
