YAMAGUCHI WINS FS TITLE, GIVES GIFU WRESTLING TEAM TITLE AT SPORTS FESTIVAL
NAKATSUGAWA, Gifu (October 3) – Takeshi Yamaguchi won the 96kg title in men's freestyle to help give his home prefecture the team title as the wrestling competition at the 2012 national sports festival came to a close.
Two other wrestlers, Seiji Suzuki at 84kg in the senior division and Yuso Aoki at 50kg in the high school division, reached the finals for Gifu but had to settle for runner-up finishes.
Gifu won the team title with 73 points, followed by Ibaraki (67.5) and Kyoto (65), which had four champions crowned on the final day. Tokyo, which will host next year's sports festival, finished in fourth place with 64 points.
Also on the final day, Olympians Sosuke Takatani and Takao Isokawa won their respective weights while former Youth Olympic Games gold medalist Yuki Takahashi won the 55kg title to become the first university freshman to win in the senior division since 2005.
In the high school division, Kazuma Ito of Amino high school won his third big domestic title of the year and was the first of three Kyoto wrestlers to win titles. Taichi Takatani, also from Amino, is the younger brother of London Olympic Games entry Sosuke Takatani.
Freestyle – seniors
55kg – Yuki Takahashi (Mie) df. Yasuhiro Morita (Yamaguchi), 2-0 (3-1, 1-0)
60kg – Noriyuki Takatsuka (Ibaraki) df. Taichi Morishita (Shizuoka), 2-0 (4-0, 2-0)
66kg – Tomotsugu Ishida (Tokyo) df. Kotaro Tanaka (Kyoto), 2-0 (1-0, 2-0)
74kg – Sosuke Takatani (Kyoto) df. Ken Karamushizawa (Aomori), 2-0 (2-0, 6-0)
84kg – Atsushi Matsumoto (Gunma) df. Seiji Suzuki (Gifu), 2-0 (3-0, 3-0)
96kg – Takeshi Yamaguchi (Gifu) df. Koki Yamamoto (Hokkaido), 2-0 (1-0, 3-0)
120kg – Takao Isokawa (Yamaguchi) df. Tetsuya Tanaka (Kagoshima), 2-0 (7-0, 5-0)
Freestyle – high school
50kg – Toshihiro Hasegawa (Tokyo) df. Yuso Aoki (Gifu), 2-1 (4-0, 1-4, 4-1)
55kg – Rei Higuchi (Ibaraki) df. Rinya Nakamura (Saitama), 2-0 (1-0, 1-0)
60kg – Kazuma Ito (Kyoto) df. Kota Konno (Toyama), 2-0 (4-1, 1-0)
66kg – Taichi Takatani (Kyoto) df. Nobuyoshi Tagojima (Akita), 2-0 (4-0, 2-2)
74kg – Tsubasa Asai (Kyoto) df. Shota Shirai (Tokyo), 2-0 (3-0, 4-1)
84kg – Tomohiro Naga (Ibaraki) df. Shohei Sato (Nagasaki), 2-0 (1-0, 3-0)
96kg – Yusuke Yoshikawa (Ibaraki) df. Chikaryo Kondo (Okayama), 2-0 (1-0, 2-0)
120kg – Yoshiyuki Inagaki (Nara) df. Shinya Yamamoto (Saitama), 2-0 (3-1, 1-0)
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