Israel’s Sasson settles for silver medal in Zagreb
After Tal Flicker’s gold medal and the bronze medals of Baruch Shmailov and Tohar Butbul, the Israeli delegation to the Judo Grand Prix Zagreb continued to reap success on Sunday. Ori Sasson won the silver medal in the over-100 kilogram category after losing the final in the battle for gold against Georgian Guram Tushishvili.
Two minutes into their battle, both fighters received a warning and a penalty. A minute later, the match was decided when 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Sasson embarked on an offensive exercise and Tushishvili took full advantage of it and threw the Israeli on his back to get the desired result in Croatia.
Before that, the 27-year-old Sasson managed to qualify for the final after beating Brazil’s Ruan Isquierdo, who suffered three penalties for passivity on the way to losing. Sasson opened the competition with a victory over Galymzhan Krikbay. The Kazakh refused to shake hands with the Israeli judoka at the end of their duel, but Sasson was not fazed and beat Shahin Gahramanov from Azerbaijan before the battle against Jur Spijkers in the quarterfinals.
A less successful day was the Israeli bronze medalist from the last European championship, Peter Paltchik. The judoka (up to 100 kg) did win the first match against Italian Giuliano Loporchio, but was beaten by a similar score by Danylo Hutsol, a Ukrainian, and was eliminated from the competition.
A similar fate came from Li Kochman (90 kg), who failed to make it into the quarterfinals, and the Israeli judoka dropped Ukrainian Semen Rakyta in the first round, but was defeated by Serbian Nemanja Majdov later.
This is the first competition that counts towards qualifying points for the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020 and therefore was very important to all competitors from the Israeli team.