Riner claims fourth French gold medal

Who else than Teddy Riner won the European title? Again he was able to add another title to his great list of honour. In April he became 22 year and he won his second European title. It took however four years to renew it. In 2007 he won his first when he was 18 for one day. On Saturday he devastated Barna Bor in the final by ippon. Also it was quite a length difference between the relative small Hungarian and the 2.04m giant from France. He finished the day with a great o-soto-gari against Bor.

In advance everybody expects him o win the gold and Riner is quite used to the pressure. Nonetheless at the 2010 World Championships he gave hope to his rivals when he lost to Daiki Kamikawa in the open category. This year Riner didn’t make any mistake so far. He won gold at the IJF Masters in Baku and won at the IJF Grand Slam in Paris.

In the semi final the Frenchman defeated Martin Padar, the 2009 European Champion. He won a bronze medal today after he nearly buried Stanislav Bondarenko (UKR) for the bronze fight.

France won the medal tally with four gold medals. Ten countries all won a gold medal. Good for judo. Five countries won two silver medals. Georgia was the only country who won two silver medals but didn’t win gold this edition. Russia recorded won five bronze medals and eight in total, but France also topped the ranking of most medals with nine in total.