Cyrille Maret close to stunt but Inal Tasoev stays cool

The French public hoped until the last minute of the Paris Grand Slam 2021 that they would win a gold medal. With thirteen medals the host of the event is number one in terms of medals, but when it comes to gold medals, France is only in 6th position with no gold.

Cyrille Maret, who was coming back to competition after he went up one category to now compete with the heavyweights, scored the first waza-ari with a superb sutemi-waza, quite unusual for heavyweights but then Inal Tasoev (RUS) who was obivsouly surprised by the first attack, started to turn on the power and this was the end of Maret's dream to win a new gold medal in Paris.

The Frenchman has already won three times here and in total has six Paris medals. Thus this is the seventh, an incredible performance, all things considered. Tasoev offered the third gold medal of the day to Russia, who climbed into second place of the overall medal ranking.

Cyrille Maret said, "To me Tasoev is one of the finest judoka in this category because he is strong but also very skillful. I wanted to propose a big fight as a sign of respect for him. I managed to score and I think it was a good final."

Joseph Terhec (FRA) won his first bronze medal in a grand slam, while Jur Spijkers took the second bronze medal of the category.