Joonhwan Lee acts like a medal candidate 100 days for Doha Worlds

The final for men U81kg at the Grand Prix in Portugal didn’t disappoint. Objective Judo fans looked forward to the final between rising star Joonhwan Lee (KOR) and Eljan Hajiyev (AZE), bronze medallist at the last Junior World Championships Guayaquil 2022. This new generation is definitely worth following.

 After a minute Hajiyev, being way less active than his opponent, was penalised with a first shido. With less than 30 seconds to go, a second shido was picked up by Hajiyev for passivity. It was time for golden score. It didn't take much time for Lee to score ippon with a powerful and speedy seoi-nage. Lee is back at the top of the medal podium.

The first bronze medal contest saw Sagi Muki (ISR) and Mihail Latisev (MDA) facing one another. It was actually a very promising match between the 2019 world champion and the 2022 junior world champion. Two styles and two generations separated the two athletes. The excitement was not felt in the way Sagi Muki was planning it though. He was scored against twice for waza-ari within less than a minute, so it was bronze for Mihail Latisev.

Frank De wit (NED) has had a hard last season and being again with the capacity to win a medal on the World Judo tour was already a good sign for the Dutch champion but to get on the podium he had to face a last challenge in the name of Hievorh Manukian (UKR). The first score came from De Wit, who launched a yoko-tomoe-nage to take the lead, before controlling the rest of the contest to win a medal that he's been waiting for, for months.

Of the tournament's eight seeds, only Achraf Moutii (MAR) failed to make it to the quarter-finals. We can therefore say without hesitation that the world rankings had a real impact on the course of the competition. Apart from Moutii and to the benefit of Zaur Dvalashvili (GEO), all top seeded competitors managed to make their way through the preliminary rounds to enter the quarter-finals, leaving no chance for the underdogs to find a place under the Portuguese sun.

It should also be noted that for the first time in many months, we have rediscovered the brilliance and commitment of a champion that we had so much pleasure in following in 2019, when he won the world title in Japan. Sagi Muki (ISR) is an exceptional judoka, whose ability to launch attacks even in the most acrobatic manner has thrilled the judo world. However, since his world title, Muki has struggled to regain his best level but it didn't quite work out against Joonhwan Lee and Muki had to bow out. During the other matches of the eliminatory phase, he was often close to losing but he also always knew how to raise the bar and continue to move on. For the bronze medal he was opposed by Mihail Latisev (MDA), but we will come back to this interesting contest later on.