Judo: Teddy Riner will resume competition in July in Budapest

Serious things have started in view of the Paris 2024 Games for Teddy Riner, who began a ten-day training camp in Rio de Janeiro on Friday, before a return to competition scheduled for July, in Budapest. “The return to competition will be on the Budapest Grand Slam, that’s for sure“, revealed in an interview with AFP the triple Olympic champion (two titles in individual and one by team) after his first training in Brazil.

“Then there will be other competitions, but it will really depend on how I come back to this first tournament. We give ourselves time. I would like to go to the Worlds in October, but we will see“, he added. Teddy Riner resumed training in Paris at the beginning of January, after a six-month break following the Tokyo Games. His last participation in the Worlds dates back to 2017, in Budapest, where he was crowned world champion for the tenth time, an absolute record.And the first of these ten titles was won in Rio, in 2007, when he was only 18 years old.

It was also in the Brazilian city that he had managed the pass of six at the Worlds, in 2013, before winning his second Olympic gold medal, in 2016. Friday, in training, he found Rafael Silva, double Olympic bronze medalist, whom he has faced many times in the final stages of major competitions, and rising stars like Joao Cesarino, 26, at the training center of the Brazilian Olympic Committee.

“Today, I changed my tune, I train a lot more abroad because I will seek competition, oppositionexplained the 32-year-old judoka. It’s the starting point, the first internship abroad, and we didn’t choose the smallest school, we chose the Brazilians. It’s a very good initiative to come here, I’m not disappointed, from the first training, I had in front of strong fighters.”

At the Tokyo Games, Teddy Riner did not manage to win his third individual gold medal, settling for bronze, but he allowed France to seek the first Olympic title in team history in beating Japan at home.