Montreal, August 29, 2015 – Kyle Reyes was the last Canadian judoka to compete at the World Championships held in Astana, in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The athlete from Brampton, Ontario was eliminated in the second round, Saturday, by an opponent who is ranked fourth in the world in the under 100kg weight class.

After being penalized, Germany’s Karl-Richard Frey, who won a bronze medal at the 2014 World Championships, came up with a yuko to earn the win against Reyes. Frey went on to the final and finished in second place.

Reyes, who is ranked 24th in the world, won his first-round match by ippon against Poland’s Jakub Wojcik, who is 50th in the world.

“Kyle won his first match by scoring a waza-ari twice using his favourite technique, the uchi-mata. In his following match, both athletes put up a good fight, until the German scored the deciding yuko,” explained Canadian team head coach Nicolas Gill, who was rather satisfied with his pupil’s performance for the day.

“Kyle is still quite young. He’s only 21 years old and he’s not that far from the best in the world. With a more favourable draw, he could have gone much deeper into the competition,” Gill added.

For his part, Kyle Reyes would have liked to have more time to prepare properly.

“My result was not that good, but it wasn’t so bad,” he said. “I’ve been injured and I wasn’t able to train as much as I would have liked. I’ll train more and come back!”

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Written and translated by Sportcom for Judo Canada