With many entertaining finals during the second day, the Athens Junior European Cup has concluded in the Greek Capital. It was the first international tournament in Greece after 3 years and it finished with many compliments from the athletes and the officials who were hosted in ‘G. Stefanopoulos indoor Hall’.
Azerbaijan, Turkey, Israel and Kosovo had a successful run, with Israel after two days of competition, leaving with 9 medals in total (4 golds, 1 silver and 4 bronze), while Turkey had 8.
Junior Men
Stanislav KORCHEMLIUKof Ukraine and Magerram IMAMVERDIEV from Azerbaijan competed in an exciting final at -81kg category. It was Imamverdiev who found the way to win the gold medal 25 second before the end of the final making up a waza-ari.
The bronze medal went to two athletes of Czech Republic. Filip Ivanka and Adam Kopecky managed to secure a spot on the podium.
In -90kg, Roy SIVAN of Israel and Cem DEMIRTAS of Turkey managed to reach the final after having an amazing tournament. It was Sivan who won the gold by ippon at 2:45 against the Turkish athlete who came close seconds before to win the final, but he ended up with the silver. Aidar ARAPOV of Kazakhstan won the bronze medal by ippon against Vugar TALIBOV of Azerbaijan, while Maksims DUINOVS of Latvia followed him on the podium after winning Ryan RIJKSEN SALMAN of Great Britain on the second bronze medal match.
Ruslan NASIRLI of Azerbaijan and Benjamin MATASEJE of Slovakia were the two finalists of the -100kg category. None could find a way to win the final after 4 minutes of competition and during golden score Mataseje managed to win the gold by ippon. Two French athletes competed for the bronze medal. Yann RIGAUD and Maxence BORDIN hoped that they will be in the gold medal match, but they had to fight for the bronze instead. Rigaud had the lead, but a determined Bordin found the way and won the medal by ippon. Zhurkam SHUKURBEKOV of Kazakhstan won the other bronze beating Sidar AKKUS of Turkey by ippon.
Junior Women
-48k.Merve Azak of Turkey after a tough battle managed to win the gold medal in the category against Swedish Tara Babulfath. Bronze medals were won by Bulgaria’s Anastasiia Balaban and Cagla Serdar of Turkey.
-52k.Tatum Keen of Great Britain and Nikolina Nisavic reached the finals quite easily and the British found an early point by waza-ari to take the lead. Nisavic attacked and she equaled just 1 min. before the end of the final. The gold medal would be decided on golden score and it was Nisavic who made it by ippon.
o fight for a gold medal. It took just over 2 minutes for Nasibov to win the gold which was the third for Azerbaijan during the tournament.«Ι had a hard training camp and it paid off. Now I m focusing on winning the gold in European and World Championships this year» said Nasibov.Guylan Alleyne of France and Maor Klein of Israel won the bronze.
Source and image: www.eju.net
