#2020Olympics #Tokyo #68 #RASHITOVUlugbek #SINDENBradly

In the last match of the day, Great Britain’s World Champion and two seed Bradly Sinden came out looking serious, while Uzbekistan’s 17th seed Ulugbek Rashitov – who had been delighting the crowd all day with his high and spinning kicks, but whose biggest win prior to today was gold at the 2019 World Military Games – looked fresh and relaxed.


The Uzbek opened the scoring with a punch as Sinden tried to land to the head from the clinch – but the Brit returned fire with trunk kicks, going four up, while the Uzbek landed another punch. Action heated up: Sinden’s kicks were hitting – then suddenly, in the best play of the game so far, Rashitov landed two head shots within seconds of each other and Round 2 ended 13-8 to the Uzbek.


The second round saw continued intensity. Sinden ran Rashitov off the area, but the Uzbek was highly accurate with his kicks, moving his score north. Sinden lost a gamjeon for grabbing, and his technique was starting to look ragged – then he landed a head kick from the clinch, putting him back in the game. Round 2 ended 18-14 to Rashitov.


The match could go either way in the third – and indeed, in continual action, the score equalized at 19-19 The drama rose a notch as the Uzbek coach called an IVR. Rejected.


As action recommenced, Sinden landed twice to the body, drawing ahead, 23-19. Rashitov fired back, with head kicks and a flurry of strikes, taking the board to 26-25. But as the final seconds counted down, it was Sinden who drew ahead just when he needed to. It looked like gold for GB, but with just 10 seconds on the clock, Rashitov landed a spinning back kick and that was the decisive blow. The match ended 34-29.


A superb win for Rashitov and agony for Sinden – who, like his team mate Lutalo Muhammad at Rio 2016, lost the game in the final moment.
Bronzes went to Hakan Recber of Turkey – who is coached by Turkish taekwondo legend and London 2012 gold medalist Servet Tazegul - and Shuai Zhao of China.

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