Yago Abuladze tasts gold in Odivelas

Former World Champion Yago Abuladze (AIN) won his first Grand prix title since five years in Tashkent. In Portugal he was the winner of the U66kg category. The level of the category was high throughout the day, offering us very high quality contests with a lot of commitment, a great pre-cursor to the final between Yashar Najafov (AZE), winner of the Heydar Aliyev Baku Grand Slam 2023 and Abuladze. He was back in Lisbon where he took a bronze medal at the 2021 European Championships.

Despite his 2021 world title, his current world ranking (51) did not allow Abuladze to claim a seeded position. This did not prevent him from finding his way to the final. After a victory against Tal Flicker (ISR) in the first round, he added victory after victory to join Najafov.

With his rough judo, Baskhuu Yondonperenlei, a finalist in Tokyo in December and number one seed here, sincerely thought he could reach the final. Although everything went well in the first rounds, the semi-final did not go his way, letting Yashar Najafov slip through to the final.

The final was a tactical battle, with only shido being distributed, two to Najafov, one to Abuladze. Golden score liberated some energy and gave Yago Abuladze the extra power needed to win the gold medal. Abuladze is back on top of the podium

A medallist of the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, Strahinja Buncic (SRB) reached the final block and found himself pitted against Shinsei Hattori (JPN), silver medallist at the Tokyo Grand Slam 2022. Buncic has an unorthodox judo style while Hattori brought a perfect Japanese judo style and we witnessed quite a spectacular contest. Everything seemed to happen in tachi-waza but suddenly Shinsei Hattori caught his opponent on the floor and pinned him down for ippon.

Kamran Suleymanov (AZE) and Baskhuu Yondonperenlei (MGL) completed the final block for a final place on the podium. Yondonperenlei looked strong but Suleymanov did too. The first waza-ari came from a ko-soto-gari and a few seconds later, Suleymanov countered the Mongolian competitor with a powerful te-waza that gave no chance for an escape. The ippon and a bronze medal were for Kamran Suleymanov.