Although the disciplinary committee has sanctioned Guram Tushishvili, with whom Teddy Riner had an altercation in the quarter-finals of the recent Olympic Games, the case is not yet closed.
The sanction was handed down last weekend, less than a month after the clash between Teddy Riner and Guram Tushishvili in the quarter-finals of the Olympic tournament. After some friction, the Georgian judoka did not hesitate to push the Frenchman, then refusing to greet him. Enough to provoke an immediate reaction from the authorities, who suspended him for the remainder of the Games.
Guram Tushishvili had therefore been deprived of the repechages as well as the team tournament. A first sanction that called for another, that of the International Judo Federation. This one fell this weekend as revealed by Teddy Riner on the set of Quotidien, Monday. And the IJF had a heavy hand since the Georgian fighter was given a 180-day suspension, the latter coming into effect on August 30 and ending on February 25.
Teddy Riner has played down the drama
But the Federation may not stop there. And not only because Guram Tushishvili has the possibility of appealing. According to Ouest-France and Le Figaro, an investigation is still open, with the authorities seeking to understand “the motivations for this stampede” and the Georgian’s suspension could therefore be further increased.
The five-time French Olympic champion, for his part, tried to play down the situation. “Not very nice. But hey, it’s the Games, we can understand that there was tension on his side. I don’t blame him at all. Especially when you have the gold medal at the end. There’s a lot of intensity,” he confided to Yann Barthès.
