Beslan Mudranov wins Russia’s first gold in Rio Olympics

Beslan Mudranov became Russia’s first medallist of the Rio Olympics after beating Kazakhstan’s Yeldos Smetov in a judo final between representatives of two countries recently buffeted by doping scandals.

“Before the Games we were training in Portugal for 10 days and we arrived here on August 3. I’m pretty confident that this is not the last gold medal we have won”.

“The country proved to everyone we can win gold”.

Russian Federation finished fourth in the medal table in London four years ago, but face the disadvantage of having their smallest contingent in more than a century – only 271 athletes.

Supporters dressed in blue and white offered fantastic backing as Paula Pareto added the Olympic gold medal in the under 48kg category to the World Championships gold medal she had won previous year.

Mudranov came out on top against the Kazakh judoka, winning by Waza-ari with Sasae-tsurikomi-ashi after 44 seconds at the Carioca Arena.

Russia’s athletics and weightlifting teams are banned from these Olympics following claims of state-sponsored doping and the International Olympic Committee resisted huge pressure to enforce a complete blanket ban.

Russia escaped a full Olympic ban when the IOC made a decision to let the respective sports federations decide on Russian participation in Rio. Japan’s Naohisa Takato and Diyorbek Urozboev of Uzbekistan took bronze. “I don’t have strong feelings, but I very much hope that this will now help my entire Russian team”.