Nakano received the message clearly and began to attack more, leaving Ota to accept a third shido and the silver medal.
Irakli Demetrashvili (GEO) had to take on world and Olympic medallist Minjong Kim (KOR) for the chance to step on to the podium of the Accor Arena. He won his first World Judo Tour medals only last year, in Abu Dhabi and Kazakhstan but has not yet found the form he had as a cadet when he won the world -18 title, in 2019. He is working at it though and in Paris he gave Kim a very hard time. Kim is not one to shy away from hard work though and with only 20 seconds left on the clock, he applied a rapid o-soto-gari and knocked the Georgian down for a yuko. It was enough.
Demetrashvili will be back and is likely to be seen on WJT podia again in the future, but for now, Minjong Kim has another great medal to add to his ever-growing and impressive collection.
In the last medal match of the day, Jur Spijkers (NED) and Artem Zolotukhin (RUS) delivered an action-packed finale. Both hunted scores, both defended well but no decision could be made until 7 minutes of fighting time had passed. Spijkers, the more active of the two, would leave Paris with the medal after his opponent was given 3 penalties.