Montréal, March 30^th, 2013 (Sportcom) – Canadian Alister Ward lost to the #3 ranked judoka in the world in his second bout, while his teammate Arthur Margelidon was eliminated in his very first match, Saturday, at the Samsun Grand Prix in Turkey.

According to Largeliton Margelidon, the Canadian coach who accompanied the two judokas on the trip, Ward was not intimidated in the least by the 3^rd best judoka in the world, the Kazakh Sergey Lim.

“He went into the bout completely confident in what he wanted to do. He came here very prepared. It’s really a shame that he lost because he started it so well with a waza-ari. It appeared as though he simply ran out of gas after that, maybe his conditioning wasn’t the best. The Kazakh threw him to ground for a yuko before scoring a waza-ari. He then consolidated the fight by immobilizing Alister for the final 30 seconds,” he added.

In his first bout, Ward got the better of the Turk Yavuz Yarali. It was the first time these judokas had faced off against one another. Ward scored a waza-ari early on, before scoring another a minute from the end of the fight,” the coach noted.

Meanwhile, Arthur Margelidon (-73 kg) lost to Bayram Ceylan, also from Turkey.

“It was pretty weird. After taking a penalty near the beginning of the match, Arthur began his comeback. Right at the moment where he seemed ready to score, his opponent suffered a head injury. He was given a five-minute break to regain his senses. When he came back he immediately threw Arthur to ground, a maneuver the referee deemed to be a waza-ari,” Largeliton Margelidon explained in his regards to his son.

Several of the best Canadian judokas will be on display at the Senior Pan-American Championships, which will take place in Costa Rica from the 19^th to 21^th of April.