Boris Rutovic connects talent with future Serbian senior success

The world title U81kg went to Serbian judoka Boris Rutovic. Rutovic went down a waza-ari in the first thirty seconds of their semi-final and 30 seconds later was almost held down too. It looked inevitable that the Kazakh would reach the final against Italian Alessandro D’Urbano.

Dosbol Balgabay (KAZ) took down: Japan, Brazil and Georgia all lost their best cadets to the Kazakh. However, the strong character of the Serbian forced a rethink in the arena.

Balgabay couldn’t have foreseen the dogged persistence of the Serbian who grappled him and chased the score non-stop and just over a minute and a half after escaping the Kazakh’s hold he took a close and unorthodox grip and with full body contact threw with sumi-gaeshi to equalise, then holding for the required ten seconds to complete the win.

In the final Boris Rutovic was pegged to meet D’Urbano (ITA), the 5th seed of the category. He had a less spectacular journey to the final but in this group it is no less impressive. He threw Aleksic (BIH) and Valchev (BUL) with seoi-nage, and Distel (GER) with seoi-otoshi, changing tack in the semi-final to throw the number one seed, Grahovac (SRB) with a brilliant de-ashi-harai for waza-ari.

Dusan Grahovac must hold a record on the circuit for most medals without ever winning a tournament. It’s easy to predict that he will win the bronze when you look at his profile. He took bronze at the 2022 continentals and worlds, at the 2023 Europeans and also at EYOF just a few weeks ago. However, judo isn’t a predictable sport and even the strongest trends can take a beating from an underdog, a hidden gem or a lapse in concentration.

The first bronze medal was fought for by Distel (GER) and the powerful thrower from Kazakhstan, Dosbol Balgabay, but the German didn’t allow any throws to be fully executed, answering even the biggest pick-up attempts with his own. However, always being second to the exchange brought a different set of problems and Distel was awarded 3 penalties, offering the medal to Balgabay.

Bendeliani (GEO) and Grahovac set about finding out of the Serbian’s trend would continue in Zagreb but an early waza-ari for the Georgian made it look less and less likely. It was enough of a buffer between Grahovac and the podium for Bendeliani to hold on to the end of normal time and claim the medal.

The final, another excellent contest, between Tavoletta’s club mate D’Urbano and Serbian judoka Rutovic was fairly one-way with Rutivoc scoring waza-ari from a tomoe-nage after only a minute and doubling the tally not long later with a sumi-gaeshi. It was gold for Serbia, silver for Italy.