Nick and Marti are in the Finals fighting for Bronze. finals start 11 AA EST (daylight savings time). Nick lost to Drasic(SLO) in the semi's when he took a behind the back grip and got caught with a sacrifice throw for Ippon. He was leading by 1 shito. Marti lost in the semi's when she stepped out of bounds with 1 sec. left score was 0-0, no shito's. Marti was livid at the ref's call. All the replays will be on Youtube.
That shido was a BS call in Marti's match. In addition, Marti was much more the early aggressor in the match. Very interesting that Marti would have met Waechter (GER) in the finals. Waechter was the beneficiary of a one shido victory over Marti in a match where Marti did every single attack in the match. That is right. Waechter made no attacks and she won the match on a passivity call.
That said, Marti let the player from TPE completely dominate her left grip througout the match making some of Marti's attacks look a little desparate.
Marty won the Bronze in Golden Score against the Hungarian. Wow what a call by the ref against the home crowd fighter. I don't think this should of been called. Winning/losing by shidos with no scores? I didn't see many good scoring attacks from her. She is aggressive but the lack of scoring with throws has to be a concern. Nick won Bronze and I see he played more aggressive in this tournament.
A must watch match in the Final in 73K Draksic gets choked out by the Hungarian Ungvari with a bottom guard guillotine lock (both hands)and turnover into a tate-shiho-gatame pin/choke for Ippon.
I agree about the call in the bronze medal match. I think it was a make up for the horrible call in the semis.
The winning by shidos will get worse as we get closer to Rio, and I believe we will have another 2016 Olympic event dominated by penalties. We are starting to see it earlier than previously.
Part of the reason I kept detailed records of wins by penalties on this board was to watch the trend. The trend seems to be playing out like I predicted.
The IJF will always be behind the curve. The IJF is forced at a point to keep the rules static, while the coaches and players keep adjusting to those static rules. In other words, the tactical element of the game of judo becomes more and more dominant as the rules become "set".
Nick broke out of a long drought and I am happy for him. People might not realize that he had not taken a medal at a Grand Prix or higher level event since 2010. He was 0-12 in bronze medal matches at Grand Prix or Grand Slam events since taking a bronze in the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Lucky number thirteen it was for him. Hope he can build on the momentum.
Maybe shortening the men's matches to 4 min. will generate more attacks? Watched Colton Brown vs. Asley Gonzalez. Good effort by Colton. Difficult to get quality attacks against the best players. Kayla just won her semi-finals bout with her relentless attack and excellent mat work.
Colton started out slow against his first opponent from KAZ. He seemed to gain confidence after scoring the yuko with ko soto gake around the halfway point. He added a waza ari with uchi mata with a little more than a minute to go. He was in position to continue in newaza but stood up immediately because the referee call was ippon. The players need to learn to continue in newaza for at least several seconds after ippon is called to make sure the call is not overturned. Colton picked up a 3rd shido with a little less than a minute left in the match and another one would have been disastrous.
Kayla is so fun to watch. She scores 3 yuko's, wazari before her ippon throw. She attacks relentless and equal skills on her feet/ground.