From 24-26 September Zagreb is the judo heart of the world organizing the eight Grand Prix in Croatia, seven times in the Croatian capital, the first edition in 2013 was held in Rijeka. This is the first opportunity for many athletes to showcase their capabilities and ambitions since the Tokyo Olympic Games.
There will be an interesting entry at the Grand Prix of Zagreb. A World Champion that you might not expect anymore – Cuban world champion Asley Gonzalez.
He acquired Romanian citizenship and is immediately added to the team.
With the first ever World Champion Barbara Matic, the Croatian Judo Federation is a proud contributor in Croatian sports and the famous Barbi is the exponent of Croatia’s top athletes over all sports, elected as sports woman of the year, even before her world title last year in Budapest, remins Judo Inside.
The Croatians can celebrate and showed what they mean after Matic came back with the gold medal and filled the streets of Split with joy, tears and fireworks. Fireworks is the ambition of the Croatians at the Grand Prix in the Dom Sportova where many top athletes had been winning essential medals boosting their careers. 2016 Olympic Champion Tina Trstenjak captured even three titles in Zagreb.
Her compatriot and 2016 Olympic medallist Ana Velensek was even crowned four times. The Slovenian’s fight like boxers, they always push hard, are conditionally strong and would do well in the boxing odds but always respect the opponents and always perform as you expect.
Olympic bronze medallist in Tokyo Toth Krisztian looks like a boxer, but he is cool, calculated and knows when to take the essential medals. He also won World bronze at home in Budapest and won the Zagreb title even three times.
The list of top athletes includes the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Champions Akira Sone, Takanori Nagase, Naohisa Takato, Hamada Shori, Teddy Riner (team gold) and contains many medallists of this year’s blockbuster event: Toth, Trstenjak, Lasha Shavdatuashvili, Niyaz Ilyasov, Guram Tushishvili, Daria Bilodid, Madeleine Malonga and world champion Jessica Klimkait.
Speaking about World Champions, Barbara Matic will certainly be present and is on the starting list so far. For Matic it was a crazy period for her with all the attention after her world title and Olympic Games where she lost the contest for bronze and finished fifth in her category U70kg. For the top athletes this is a period to chill out and prepare for the next Olympic qualification for Paris in 2024, that starts early next year, but Matic is a proud woman, who would want to show her best in Zagreb.
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