By Tetsushi Kajimoto
TOKYO (Reuters) – French heavyweight judoka Teddy Riner suffered a shock defeat on Friday, losing to Tamerlan Bashaev of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) team in the men’s judo +100 kg division and bowing out from the gold medal race in the quarter-finals.
The 32-year-old double Olympic champion, one of the biggest names in the sport, was aiming for a third consecutive gold to match a record held by Japanese great Tadahiro Nomura.
But Riner, sporting a beard and a shaved head, lost to the ROC’s Bashaev after suffering a sumi-otoshi waza-ari throw in ‘Golden Score’ sudden-death overtime.
Friday’s defeat followed a surprise loss last year when Riner, 10-time world champion, lost for the first time in nearly a decade. Japan’s Kokoro Kageura ended Riner’s 154-match winning streak, going back to 2010, in the Paris Grand Slam.
Riner will take part in a repechage contest, facing Rafael Silva of Brazil in the afternoon session that kicks off at 0800 GMT, but the best he could hope for would be a bronze medal.
Earlier he had advanced into the quarter-finals with ease, taking out Austrian Stephan Hegyi with a dynamic inner-thigh-throw ippon victory in a round of 32 bout that lasted little more than 2 minutes.
In the round of 16, Riner beat Or Sasson of Israel with a back-fall reversal for a waza-ari win.
(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
