Tyler's inspirational display through the lens of Dan Rod
Thursday brought the first contests and plenty of emotion to the pyramid in Long Beach, the venue for the Jiu-Jitsu World Championship. The white belts and first blue belt divisions took to the mats in competition.
In the team contest, Gracie Elite took top spot at white belt, followed by Gracie Barra and Cia Paulista.
“A group of 30 guys came from Mongolia. Footnote: there are no Jiu-Jitsu academies over there. They’ve already won two gold medals!” remarked editor Ivan Trindade over his Twitter account (@IvanGMreporter).
In the partial results, Nova União took the lead on opening day, ahead of Alliance and Ribeiro JJ.
Now individually, one of the standouts was blue belt Marcio André, one of the athletes GRACIEMAG.com predicted would take from and center this season, winning the light featherweight division alongside teammate Jonathan Van Buren.
And then there was Tyler Brey, who raised the roof with his performance. Even with a congenital impairment of his spine that left him without the use of his legs, he donned his gi and took to combat. For further details on this touching story, check out the GRACIEMAG at the Worlds Blog.
Now to find out the complete results so far, pay a visit to the IBJJF website.