Gold for Khalmurzaev gives Russia a dilemma for Rio2016

The Grand Prix of Havana is in all aspects super interesting. As first event of the year you can see the shape of the potential Olympic medallists. In 2012 the first event gave a good insight in the medal winners in London. In Cuba we can see a strong Russian men’s team and strong Israelian women. In the category U81kg it was 22-year old Khasan Khalmurzaev from Russia who on the gold in Havana.

USA is also on track for this year with gold for Marti Malloy and an old face of the international circuit, the American Travis Stevens, fifth on the occasion of the last Olympic Games in London who was opposed in the final against Khalmurzaev. With Kayla Harrison to follow on Sunday the Americans can be confident as the silver of Stevens was a bonus in this field, typical for the American mentality as soon as the Olympic year has started they’re getting into shape.

Despite a beautiful continental title last year obtained on the occasion of the Pan-American Games in Toronto, Stevens had kind of a year off from the international podiums through a run of injuries. This place in the final puts him back on the list of the Olympic medallist favourites in a weight category which counts an impressive number of world class judoka such as Avtandili Tchrikishvili (GEO), Takanori Nagase (JPN), Antoine Valois-Fortier (CAN) and Loïc Pietri (FRA).

With a superb action-reaction movement on the edge of the fighting area, Khalmurzaev scored a first waza-ari at the beginning of the bout. For the rest of the match, Khalmurzaev mainly controlled Stevens to secure the victory.

The first bronze medal contest saw the winner of the 2014 Tashkent Grand Prix, Roman Moustopoulos (GRE) opposed to Sven Maresch (GER), who was the second top seeded competitor here in Havana. Maresch received the first penalty for a false attack. Then Moustopoulos scored a first yuko with a counterattack. While Moustopoulos was also penalised once, Maresch received two extra shidos putting him in the danger zone, one shido away from the hansokumake. But the victory finally went to the Greek even if he was penalised again for passivity.

The second bronze medal bout featured world number 17, Csoknyai Laszlo (HUN) and 2015 Tyuman Grand Slam bronze medallist, Alexander Wieczerzak (GER). The first left handed o-soto-gari from Wieczerzak was unsuccessful. Then the fight resumed into a tough battle to get the strongest grip, when Csoknyai was capable of counterattacking twice the German’s attacks for a waza-ari-awasete-ippon and a bronze medal.

Khalmurzaev seems to make the difference with this victory, the bad luck of Sirazhudin Magomedov who got thrown after a matte call, should give him that benefit. Khalmurzaev has the future, but Ivan Nifontov is still ahead of Khalmurzaev and even Alan Khubetsov is ranked tenth. Tough decision for team manager Ezio Gamba where the potential of Khalmurzaev hasn’t reached its limits.