Sidali Lamri of Algeria won gold in Judo Men's -66kg division at the Workers' Gymnasium on Sunday, September 7, beating Japan's Fujimoto Satoshi in the golden score period.
Lamri's win was Algeria's second gold medal of the Judo competition, with Mouloud Noura winning gold in the Men's -60kg class.
Fujimoto had been aiming for an unprecedented fourth consecutive Paralympic gold medal, and will be disappointed to get only silver.
The final was closely contested and the two judokas could not be separated after the regular five minutes of competition time. In the golden score period, Lamri was finally able to execute a meaningful technique, throwing Fujimoto for waza-ari and sealing gold.
In the preliminary rounds, Lamri beat Ilkin Alishov (Azerbaijan) by a single yuko before beating competition favorite Reza Golmohammadi Andarian (Iran) by ippon in a fiercely contested semifinal.
Fujimoto had earlier beaten Finland's 2004 Paralympic bronze medalist Jani Kallunki. In the semifinal he finally overcame 2006 IBSA World Championship winner Victor Sanchez (Cuba) by ippon in the golden score period.
In the bronze medal matches Sanchez defeated Sergii Karpeniuk (Ukraine) by waza-ari and Jani Kallunki (Finland) beat Golmohammadi Andarian by osaekomi ippon to seal a bronze medal.
(BOCOG September 7, 2008)