Ilia Sulamanidze is not a flashy player. He does what he needs to do to get the job done. In his opening match, he defeated his opponent, Veg Zsombor (HUN) with osoto-gari for yuko and hikikomi-gaeshi for waza-ari. Against Vadim Ghimbovschi (MDA) he won with a mere yuko from osoto-gari.
His first ippon of the day came in the quarterfinal, where he faced Nilaz Bilalov (RUS). First the took him down with a tewaza for yuko, then he pinned him for ippon, proving that Georgians can win by groundwork as well. Another ippon came in his semifinal, against Gennaro Pirelli (ITA) and this one was a really dynamic counter tewaza counter against the Italian's osoto-gari attempt.
The final was against Dota Arai (JPN), whom Sulamanidze had beaten before. But Arai had clearly studied Sulamanidze and was he aggressor for most of the match. Once they got into Golden Score Arai decided to go for the kill and attacked with a driving ouchi-gari. Sulamanidze did a bold counter which saw him do a sacrifice action to pull off the technique. Initially the referee gave a waza-ari to Arai but that was later changed to yuko for Sulamanidze. Since it was Golden Score, that means he got the gold.
The decision to award the yuko to Sulamanidze was a bit controversial because although he did not land completely on his back, a large part of his back did hit the mat. Usually for counters, this means no score. Even the live commentators initially thought it would be no score for either player because of this. Still, it was a gutsy move by Sulamanidze and it paid off for him.
