Krisztian Toth completes triple in Zagreb

Krisztian Toth of Hungary has a love relation with Zagreb. At the Grand Prix he won his third gold medal. He was the youngest ever winner of the Grand Prix in 2014, he won in 2015 and the 2017 edition. He belongs to a very small group of athletes who one specific Grand Prix three or more times.

Song Yu won the Grand Prix in Qingdao five times, Kaori Matsumoto four times in Düsseldorf and a selected group won one Grand Prix three times.

As the top seed, Aleksandar Kukolj of Serbia was prematurely eliminated, it was finally the Brazilian Rafael Macedo, who had defeated Kukolj, who entered the final against the other favourite of the tournament, the Hungarian, 2014 silver world medallist, Toth Krisztian who, despite intense matches, managed to pass through the preliminary rounds.

The final started with a moderate pace as both athletes were observing one another. Half way to the end only one shido was awarded to the Brazilian, who had to attack. Toth, who his well known for his counterattacking abilities, took his chance and after having firmly blocked Macedo’s attack, counterattacked him with a superb hip movement, for a perfect ippon and the fourth Grand Prix golden honour for him.

The first bronze medal match opposed the bronze medallist of the 2017 Ekaterinburg Grand Slam, Magomed Magomedov (RUS) and Nicholas Mungai (ITA), whose best result so far was a bronze medal at the Bucharest European Open 2017. Half way to the end, Mungai was penalised with a first shido after having dropped on his knees to avoid being attacked. Then Magomedov was also penalised with a shido as he was blocking the arm of his opponent. Only a dozen seconds before the end of the match, Mungai applied a yoko-tomoe-nage, which did not score but which he could follow up with an arm-bar for ippon to win his first medal on the occasion of a Grand Prix.

In the second bronze medal match the 24-year-old Japanese, Kobayashi Yusuke, who had never obtained a medal on the IJF World Judo Tour, faced Tural Safguliyev of Azerbaijan, silver medallist at the Cancun Grand Prix last June. Halfway to the end, Safguliyev was penalised twice, when Kobayashi had only one shido to his name. As the last thirty last seconds were approaching, Kobayashi applied a o-soto-otoshi for waza-ari, immediately followed by an immobilisation for ippon and a first Grand Prix medal for the Japanese judoka and already the sixth medal for team Japan.

Judoka with 3 or more victories at one Grand Prix:

Song Yu, 5 QIngdao

Kaori Matsumoto, 4 Düsseldorf

Beslan Mudranov, 3 Abu Dhabi

Varlam Liparteliani, 3 Düsseldorf

Fei Chen, 3 Qingdao

Krisztian Toth, 3 Zagreb

Alim Gadanov, 3 Qingdao

Urantsetseg Munkhbat, 3 Ulaanbaatar

Won Jin Kim, 3 Jeju

DongHan Gwak, 3 Jeju