A great crowd bath and confidence: double Olympic heavyweight champion Teddy Riner won the Paris tournament for the eighth time, a record, less than six months before the Olympic Games.
Of course, the road is still long towards a third Olympic title in the +100 kg category, after London 2012 and Rio 2016, and adversity was relative on Sunday, in the absence of the other main contenders for the Olympic title. But this day kicks off 2024 perfectly.
“It’s done, we’re off to a good start to the year,” said Riner. “It was important for me to come to Paris, it’s a review, because it will be like that on D-day”, next August 2 at the Arena du Champ de Mars.
Sunday at Bercy, in this other arena where he is the king, “the public supported me well”, applauded the Frenchman, who still wants to “stay with his feet on the ground, take stock of the situation” because according to him , “things are missing”.
– Winning return –
Nine months after winning his eleventh world crown, in Doha, Qatar, Riner made his return to the tatami mats in individual competition.
The triple Olympic champion (also crowned in 2021 by teams) is now the sole record holder of the Paris Grand Slam, ahead of Lucie Décosse and Clarisse Agbégnénou (-63 kg), crowned for the seventh time on Saturday.
Riner had not necessarily checked off this tournament in his preparation. After two training courses in Brazil, in the heat, then in Kazakhstan, in the cold, the 34-year-old Frenchman thought he would resume in Baku in two weeks (February 16-18).
But he couldn’t resist a good dose of clamor, in a dress rehearsal for what awaits him this summer.
“The condition was good, even if I’m not in the best shape,” Riner put things into perspective. “There are six months left to work on technique, physique and of course judo.”
To really talk about repetition, however, his fiercest opponents expected at the Games were missing, such as the Japanese Tatsuru Saito or the Russians Inal Tasoev, with whom he shared the gold medal at the 2023 Worlds, or Tamerlan Bashaev, against whom he lost at the 2021 Tokyo Games.
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The Tajik Temur Rakhimov, current world No.1, the Georgian Guram Tushishvili or the Finn Martti Puumalainen, European champion in Montpellier in the absence of Riner, were not lined up either.
The important thing was also to take valuable points in the “Olympic ranking”, the first eight of which will be seeded and will therefore have a slightly clearer path until the quarters.
On Sunday, the star even had to work hard, notably in the semi-final against 25-year-old Uzbek Alisher Yusupov, bronze medalist at the 2023 Worlds.
For a few seconds, Bercy and its approximately 15,000 spectators were silent when Yusupov brought down the French giant. But the ippon, synonymous with the end of the fight, was finally downgraded to a simple point (waza-ari) after video refereeing: Riner had not been thrown directly onto his back. Trailing, the Frenchman equalized before placing another decisive attack in the final seconds.
– “Achieve something great” –
In the final, against the South Korean Minjong Kim, whom he faced for the first time, Riner had his only overtime fight of the day. Against this left-hander who was smaller than him, a profile he feared, Riner finally won after 24 additional seconds.
“The competition is there, you can see it clearly. There is nothing easy, it has never been easy and even less so now,” maintained Riner, who had started the day with three easier fights.
Riner chose Antalya, in Turkey at the end of March, for his next meeting, with his eyes fixed on the Olympic goal: “What motivates me is to experience the Games in Paris, at home, it’s something something magical.”
“I’m fighting to achieve something great,” he announced, even if “it doesn’t work, my life doesn’t end there, I think I’ve already proven enough, but it keeps me going I really care, so I’m going to do whatever it takes to come away with this great medal.”
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2024-02-05 10:25:16
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