Judo IJF World Championships 2023

[ChandlerMne 1,212]

Happy for Teddy.

Hope for home country gold 

[phelps 8,727]

Day #7

 

women's +78kg

 

Gold:  Akira Sone

Silver:  Julia Tolofua

Bronze:  Raz Hershko &  Beatriz Souza

 

men's +100kg

 

Gold:  Teddy Riner

Silver:  Inal Tasoev (RUS)

Bronze:  Rafael Silva &  Alisher Yusupov

[phelps 8,727]

and we couldn't end the championship without a major scandal... 

 

 to Inal Tasoev, who played a wonderful final bout vs the great  Teddy Riner and he actually beat him on the mat.  

 

only a biased ref committee didn't call a good, clean, enormous waza-ari in his favour in the Golden Score period, allowing Riner to find the last drop of energy and a winning throw a few seconds later.

 

congrats to Riner for his record 11th world title, but this time it was the least undeserved of them all (despite not being the first controversial win by him).

[phelps 8,727]

for what concerns  Italy, the championship is over (we won't be part of the farcical mixed team event Tomorrow).

 

the final summary is meh! 

 

4 medals is a new record for us, but it could and should have gone better.

 

of our 18 players, the only one who exceeded the expectations is the young Asya Tavano in the women's super-Heavyweights, who earlier Today won against all odds her bout vs the world no.1  Romane Dicko.

unfortunately, she only ended up in 7th place, but still she earned a lot of valuable points in the OQR. Congrats to her.

 

all the other guys, instead, either did the bare minimum (most of the team) or even underperformed (Parlati leading this category, not a surprise...but also Bellandi, Giuffrida -given her extremely favourable draw- and in a certain sense also Lombardo, even if he was more unlucky than anything).

 

finally, still asking myself why "the not young anymore" Mungai is always named in the squad, despite he doesn't win a single match against even the average guys? why always waste a place in the team who could go to a youngster in the need of making some experience at the highest level? (and we have quite a lot of them).

Edited May 13, 2023 by phelps

[Monzanator 5,126]

Nothing to report from Poland. Our judo has been dropped from the pack

[owenp_23 564]

Team USA Results

 

Men

Ari Berliner (-66kg) Round of 64 Lost to Demirel

Isaiah Ramirez (-66kg) Round of 64 Lost to Poliak

Dominic Rodriguez (-73kg) Round of 32 Lost to Pelivan

Jack Yonezuka (-73kg) Round of 16 Lost to Heydarov

Kell Berliner (-81kg) Round of 64 Lost to Drzymal

Nicolas Yonezuka (-81kg) Round of 32 Lost to Del Orbe

John Jayne (-90kg) Round of 64 Lost to Nyman

L.A. Smith (-100kg) Round of 32 Lost to Kumric

Christian Konoval (+100kg) Round of 64 Lost to Chotchaev

 

Women

Maria Laborde (-48kg) Round of 32 Lost to Tsunoda

Angelica Delgado (-52kg) Round of 32 Lost to Buchard

Tasha Cancela (-57kg) Round of 64 Lost to Perisic

Mariah Holguin (-57kg) Round of 32 Lost to Nelson Levy

Sara Golden (-63kg) Round of 64 Lost to Favorini

Hannah Martin (-63kg) Round of 64 Lost to Piovesana

Chantal Wright (-70kg) Round of 64 Lost to Batsuuri

Nicole Stout (-78kg) Round of 32 Lost to Lee

Mackenzie Williams (+78kg) Round of 32 Lost to Su

 

Not great

[pedja789 86]

14 hours ago, phelps said:

for what concerns  Italy, the championship is over (we won't be part of the farcical mixed team event Tomorrow).

 

the final summary is meh! 

 

4 medals is a new record for us, but it could and should have gone better.

 

of our 18 players, the only one who exceeded the expectations is the young Asya Tavano in the women's super-Heavyweights, who earlier Today won against all odds her bout vs the world no.1  Romane Dicko.

unfortunately, she only ended up in 7th place, but still she earned a lot of valuable points in the OQR. Congrats to her.

 

all the other guys, instead, either did the bare minimum (most of the team) or even underperformed (Parlati leading this category, not a surprise...but also Bellandi, Giuffrida -given her extremely favourable draw- and in a certain sense also Lombardo, even if he was more unlucky than anything).

 

finally, still asking myself why "the not young anymore" Mungai is always named in the squad, despite he doesn't win a single match against even the average guys? why always waste a place in the team who could go to a youngster in the need of making some experience at the highest level? (and we have quite a lot of them).

Sorry, but what are you talking about?

Since I've been following judo, Italy is winning 0-2 medals at the World Championships (more often 0 then 2). What you call "meh" is probably most medals Italy has won in 67 years of the World Championships.

Giuffrida and Bellandi beating Olympic champions is bare minimum? Lombardo going trough two European and one Asian champion is bare minimum? Underperforming?

Your dissatisfaction boggles me.

[phelps 8,727]

1 hour ago, pedja789 said:

Sorry, but what are you talking about?

Since I've been following judo, Italy is winning 0-2 medals at the World Championships (more often 0 then 2). What you call "meh" is probably most medals Italy has won in 67 years of the World Championships.

Giuffrida and Bellandi beating Olympic champions is bare minimum? Lombardo going trough two European and one Asian champion is bare minimum? Underperforming?

Your dissatisfaction boggles me.

Italy are no longer the small team they once were.

 

it's been quite some time that we're winning cadet and junior world gold medals, now we have a new generation of players that are definitely among the best in the world.

 

now it's time to take the fruit of all this work.

and when it doesn't happen, it's frustrating.

and must be said, you can't always be happy when you don't hit your target, as ambitious as it might be.

 

Bellandi is the no.1 in the world (maybe only Wagner could argue about it) and has always beaten all of her rivals in the past 2 years (except the German).

not winning Gold is definitely underperforming.

 

the same is for Lombardo...he's a generational talent, the only man capable to beat Hifumi Abe (twice) at 66kg before he couldn't make the weight anymore (and he paid the prize for that in Tokyo) and had to switch at 73kg, where he's quite clearly the strongest man in the class after Shoei Ono's retirement.

as I wrote, he was just unlucky, bur still, he didn't come home with a more than expected (and deserved gold).

 

Giuffrida lost to Pupp, who's not at her level.

she had a clean highway to the gold medal match (with Krasniqi, Buchard and Abe all in the other side of the table draw) and she missed it.

then she won the bronze medal vs Krasniqi only bewcause the girl from Kosovo was not on top of her game after losing the semifinal match.

 

to me, all those results are good, but still below the expectation.

[phelps 8,727]

Day #8, Medal Matches

 

Mixed Team Event

 

Gold Medal match:  Japan vs  France

Bronze Medal match #1:  Georgia vs  Germany

Bronze Medal match #2:  Morocco vs  Netherlands

[pedja789 86]

1 hour ago, phelps said:

now it's time to take the fruit of all this work.

and when it doesn't happen, it's frustrating.

But it does happening, Italy doubled last year medal count, which was also a double of 2021, and in 2019. there were no medals. I think that you are overestimating Italian team, which leads to unrealistic expectations.

 

1 hour ago, phelps said:

Giuffrida lost to Pupp, who's not at her level.

If that level is "not in top 5", I think she is there. I don't know why are you underestimating both her and Keldiyorova, calling them clean highway. I would say that in a past year Keldiyorova performed better then Giuffrida. Giuffrida losing to Pupp gave here slightly easier path to bronze.

 

1 hour ago, phelps said:

the same is for Lombardo...he's a generational talent, the only man capable to beat Hifumi Abe (twice) at 66kg before he couldn't make the weight anymore (and he paid the prize for that in Tokyo) and had to switch at 73kg, where he's quite clearly the strongest man in the class after Shoei Ono's retirement.

as I wrote, he was just unlucky, bur still, he didn't come home with a more than expected (and deserved gold).

After Ono Shohei retired there is no "clearly strongest man" in 73. I remember Lombardo beat Abe once (Paris GS '19), when was the second time? And he is not the only man capable, but that is beside the point. He is definitively one of the best, which he proved to be in this competition. Same goes for Bellandi. Even if they both are the best of their divisions (I don't agree, but whatever) it is not that big of difference between athletes at the top in most categories. There are very few competitors that will win consistently against anybody, Lombardo and Bellandi ain't one of them, and I don't think they should be criticized for that.