Highlights From the Men’s Preliminaries - Day 4

Top seed Francois Gauthier Drapeau (CAN) left the race very early thanks to an uchi-mata from the knees at the hands of Manuel Parlati (ITA). Parlati was then dispatched by Nace Herkovic (SLO). The Slovenian does not even have a placing on the World Judo Tour but he now has a 7th place from this world championship and it was earned with some explosive, courageous judo.

How about the finalists of this year’s grand slam in Mongolia? Yuhei Oino (JPN) and Joonhwan Lee (KOR) met in round two in Baku. Only one could progress and on this occasion it was Lee who stepped forward. The Japanese team would have no representative in the men’s final block of the day, for the first time this week.

With two seeds, Oino and Gauthier Drapeau, out early, the remaining two had some work to do to respect the ranking. Both Mihajlo Simin (SRB) and Zelim Tckaev (AZE) fought intelligently throughout the morning session to ensure they would appear in the last fights of the day. Among his wins of the day were those against Casse (BEL) and Tatalashvili (UAE), putting him in a confident place ahead of his final.

Simin would be fighting for bronze after a very close contest against

Tato in the semi-final stage. The scoreline said 3-2 on penalties but the whole 5 minutes and 41 seconds was fascinating and Simin came very close to blocking Tato Grigalashvili (GEO) from his 6th consecutive world final.

Tato Grigalashvili, what a special judoka! He fights and fights and keeps fighting until the fight is over. He has appeared in the last five world finals and has won three of them. Winning a fourth world title would push him into a whole new sphere, a living legend of judo. At only 26 years old he still has the potential to make history, not just for Georgian judo but for world judo.

The final block, including Tato’s final, will begin at 6pm local time. All the action can be followed live on JudoTV.com.