Two years before the Paris 2024 Olympics, Teddy Riner judo star will resume competition this summer at the Budapest Grand Slam. He was recently on stage in Rio de Janeiro.
Serious things have started for the Paris 2024 Games for Teddy Riner. The double medalist in Tokyo (bronze and gold) began a ten-day training camp in Rio de Janeiro on Friday, before a return to competition scheduled for July in Budapest. “The return to competition will be on the Budapest Grand Slam, that’s for sure, revealed the triple Olympic champion (two individual titles and one team) after his first training in Brazil. Then there will be other competitions, but it will really depend on how I come back to this first tournament. We give ourselves time. I would like to go to the Worlds in October, but we will see.
Riner, 32, returned to training in Paris in early January, after a six-month hiatus in a row at the Tokyo Games. His last participation in the World Championships dates back to 2017, in Budapest, where he was adorned with gold for the tenth time, an absolute record. And the first of these ten titles was won in Rio, in 2007, at the age of 18. Friday, in training, he found Rafael Silva, double Olympic bronze medalist, faced many times in the final stages of major competitions, and rising values like Joao Cesarino, 26 years old.
“Today, I changed my tune, I train a lot more abroad because I will look for competition, the opposition, explained the ten-time world champion. This is the starting point, the first internship abroad, and we did not choose the smallest school, we chose the Brazilians. It’s a very good initiative to come here, I’m not disappointed. From the first training, I had in front of strong fighters ”.