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OSAKA (Japan), Sept 11: Sydney Olympics judo champion Kosei Inoue Thursday proved he is still top of the world as he helped hosts Japan snatch three of four golds at stake on the opening day of the World Judo Championships.
China took the other gold when Atlanta Olympics champion Sun Fuming dashed Japan’s clean sweep of golds by beating local favourite Maki Tsukada in the women’s over 78kg class final.
Japan strongly reached the finals of the four categories with Inoue winning the men’s under 100kg title, Yasuyuki Muneta winning the men’s over 100kg title and Noriko Anno winning the women’s under 78kg title, respectively.
Inoue, also the Asian Games champion in Busan, lived up to his pre-tournament promise when he floored France’s Ghislain Lemaire to score an ippon to complete the day’s perfect five ippon victories.
It was his third straight world title, stretching his unbeaten record in the world championships and the Olympics to 21 straight wins, 19 of them immaculate ippon victories.
In the semifinals, Inoue repeated his Sydney Olympics final feat by eliminating Nicolas Gill of Canada, who failed to win the bronze losing to Ihar Makarau of Belarus in a playoff.
Country Gold Silver Bronze Total
Japan 3 1 0 4
China 1 0 0 1
France 0 1 0 1
Cuba 0 1 0 1
Netherlands0 1 0 1
Brazil 0 0 2 2
Russia 0 0 2 2
Belarus 0 0 1 1
Ukraine 0 0 1 1
Britan 0 0 1 1
Spain 0 0 1 1
Total 4 4 8 16
—AFP
