Beka Gviniashvili gears up for Olympic Games U100kg

Beka Gviniashvili all but assured himself of a place at his first Olympic Games as the youngster and lightest judoka in the category in Baku won his first Grand Slam gold at U100kg against Samsun Grand Prix bronze medallist Cirjenics Miklos (HUN). The 20-year-old World Judo Masters winner saved his best until last as he won his sixth and final fight by launching Cirjenics with a trademark ura-nage for ippon after 36 seconds which received a huge ovation from the Azerbaijan crowd.

World number 25 Gviniashvili is now ready for an invite to the World Judo Masters and will be fancied to be in the medal hunt at the Olympic Games having only moved up from U90kg to U100kg in December.

In the first semi-final Cirjenics bested Dusseldorf Grand Prix bronze medallist and Rio 2016 hopeful Adlan Bisultanov (RUS). The Hungarian came from a waza-ari down to defeat Bisultanov after 75 seconds and put his own name into contention for the Olympics as he chases down qualification by right rather than a continental quota allocation. In the second semi-final Gviniashvili defeated Paris Grand Slam bronze medallist Wolf Aaron (JPN) with a ko-soto-gake earning a second waza-ari and guaranteeing his place on the podium.

The first bronze medal was won by Tokai University member Wolf who emphatically sent Karl-Richard Frey (GER) over with a sublime uchi-mata which Japanese head coach Inoue Kosei would have been proud of. The second bronze medal was won by number two seed Dimitri Peters (GER) who bested 2015 Baku Grand Slam winner Bisultanov. After seeing teammate Frey finish fifth in the previous contest, there was added incentive for Peters who threw Bisultanov with an osoto-gari for a yuko and that was the only score after five minutes. The result hands all the momentum to ne-waza master Peters with one qualification event remaining as both judoka will be invited to the World Judo Masters in Mexico.