Jul 28 (Japan Today) - Takanori Nagase on Tuesday won Japan’s fifth gold medal in judo at the Tokyo Olympics, beating Mongolia’s Saeid Mollaei in the final of the men’s 81-kilogram division.
Nagase improved on his bronze medal in Rio de Janeiro with a strong performance all day at the Budokan. The 2015 world champion had a history of falling short on judo’s biggest stages, but he completed a waza ari 1:43 into golden score to claim the Olympic title.
Mollaei won his first Olympic medal two years after leaving his native Iran upon revealing that his national team coaches had ordered him to lose in the semifinals of the 2019 world championships in Tokyo to avoid facing Israel’s Sagi Muki in the final. Mollaei subsequently moved to Germany and then acquired Mongolian citizenship. Mongolia has three judo medals in Tokyo.
