After Day 1 of competitions at the Grand Slam in Ekaterinburg, IJF Media asked Neil Adams, Supervisor of the IJF Referee Commission and former European and World champion and Olympic silver medalist to present us with his technical analysis of the day.
Pareto (ARG) vs. Figueroa (ESP) in the -48kg final

“It seems there are too many shidos wins. Hopefully in the next two days we see more victories by ippon.

It’s a problem sometimes when athletes are tired. Watching this final block today and also the early stages, I had the impression some of the athletes look tired. You might notice that sometimes when you have competitions close together. We’ve had Paris, Düsseldorf, Marrakech and now Ekaterinburg. Some of these athletes have to travel a long way and sometimes they stay on two or three competitions back-to-back and you can notice it, they are bit travel weary.

Oshima (JPN) vs. Lkhagvajamts (MGL) in the -60kg final

It’s not so much the attacking, but the attacking with intention to throw and intention to score. Sometimes when you are tired it is more difficult to do that.

As the tournament gradually moves forward, I hope it takes up and hopefully we see more ippons. I think the ippon-rate today was about 70 percent, in Paris it was 79 percent as opposed to the shido-wins.”

See also