Eduardo Avila of Mexico won gold in the Men's -73kg class at the Workers' Gymnasium on Monday, September 8, after beating China's Xu Zhilin of China.

The 2007 Para Pan-American Games winner performed consistently throughout the competition and was rarely in difficulty during matches.

In the final, Xu was unable to utilize his favored osaekomi technique and Avlia was able to catch the Chinese judoka off balance to secure an ippon win after a little over one minute.

In earlier rounds, Avila beat the 2007 IBSA World Champion Jorge Hierrezuelo in his first match and then Fabian Ramirez (Argentina) by ippon in his semifinal.

In his first game, Xu quickly defeated Ramin Aliyev (Azerbaijan) with a 54-second osaekomi ippon and then overcame the 2007 World Championships bronze medalist Sergii Sydorenko (Ukraine) on points to reach the final.

In the bronze medal matches, Sydorenko's and Hierrezuelo's match needed the Golden Score period to separate the two judokas. Sydorenko finally triumphed by hantei-gachi a minute into the extra time, and promptly collapsed to the floor in ecstasy.

In the other match, Ramirez beat Matthias Krieger (Germany) to win bronze. Veteran Ramirez won a silver medal 12 years ago, in the -78kg class at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games.

Avila becomes the first Mexican judoka to win a Paralympic medal.

(BOCOG September 8, 2008)