A winning and particularly expedited return. Teddy Riner won the Budapest Grand Slam on Sunday, his first individual competition a year after his bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
Coming to Hungary to gauge himself on the road to the Paris-2024 Olympics where he will aim for a third individual Olympic title, the 33-year-old Frenchman beat the Dutchman Jelle Snippe in the final after a quick fight won in 40 seconds.
“I would have liked to be a little faster”
After his victory, Teddy Riner admitted to having felt “fright”. “It’s never easy to get back into it,” he said. With this new medal in hand, it’s now time for an initial assessment: “we have to keep the positive points and go back a little to look at what has not been and what is missing for the future”.
This trip to Hungary will therefore have been beneficial because he thus had “some answers” on the points to be improved. “I would have liked to be a little faster, a little more toned, a little more comfortable in my trainers, but hey, it’s a comeback”. He will therefore “work on this” in order to “arrive in very good conditions for the Paris Olympics”.