Italy's national champion Antonio Ciano denied a late comeback from Japanese judoka Ono Takashi to win the men's 81kg at the 2007 Beijing Judo Open with a waza-ari on Friday.

The 26-year-old, whose latest triumph was in September's World Cup at Birmingham, is the top judoka of his country in the men's light-heavyweight category and has been crowned in the World Military Championships in Vinkovci last year.

He and his opponent Takashi have been regarded the leading ones of the participants here, but the Japanese is indeed nobody to the judo world and there's not any statistics and any mark in international events shown about him.

Also on the evening, two judokas from the hosts China failed their third-place matches and saw the bronze medals going to Russian Yury Panasenkov and Aea Min Sun of South Korea, both in ippon wins.

(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2007)