Kyle Reyes of Brampton, Ontario won the silver medal on Tuesday at the 2022 World Judo Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The 29-year old judokan placed second in the men’s 100 kilogram half heavyweight division.
Reyes was placed in Pool B, and won his pool despite not getting a first round bye. In the pool, he defeated Miklos Cirjenics of Hungary, Benjamin Mataseje of Slovakia, Batkhuyagiin Gonchigsuren of Mongolia, and Ilia Sulamanidze of Georgia. In the semifinals, Reyes beat Zelym Kotsoiev of Azerbaijan, before losing to gold medalist Muzaffarbek Turoboyev of Uzbekistan in the gold medal match. Michael Korrel of the Netherlands and Kotsoiev each won the bronze medal.
The 2022 World Judo Championships is the most successful World Judo Championships that Team Canada has ever had. Never before has Team Canada won as many as three medals until this year. Canada’s other medalists in Tashkent were Canadian Olympic bronze medalists Jessica Klimkait of Whitby, Ontario and Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard of Montreal, Quebec. Klimkait won the bronze medal in the women’s 57 kilogram division and Beauchemin-Pinard won bronze in the women’s 63 kilogram division. Klimkait and Beauchemin-Pinard both won bronze for Canada at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021.
This was the third time Canada won multiple medals at the World Judo Championships. They previously won two medals in 1981 and 2019.