For the first time every the Cadet European Championships are held in Latvia. Its capital Riga is host of the top talents in the cadet age group under 18 years. This year is the first major event for cadets since the three European Cups for cadets this year after the pandemic hit the youth, reports Judo Inside.
One thing is for sure, the Latvian organization will guarantee a good championships as they had plenty of time to organize the best championships possible.
Time to analyse some of the cadets that have practiced at the three Cadet European Cups so far this season. From those events a number of top talents came up and the question is, can they hold on to their form of those limited European Cups in Porec, Teplice and Bucharest.
393 Athletes came to Riga from 37 countries. For the first time since 10 years the number of participants is below 400.
Latvian judo booked most of the main successes with Vsevolods Zelonijs who won Olympic bronze in Sydney 2000. Vsevolods Zelonijs won bronze at the World Championships in 1997 and he was in three European finals.
Zelonijs was General Secretary of the Latvian Judo Federation and later he became President and organizer of the Cadet European Championships. Jevgenijs Borodavko is another great Latvian judoka who won three European Championships medals.
Glebs Talalujevs won the European Cadet title for Latvia in 2011. In 2016 Latvian judo celebrated the European Cadet title of Artjoms Galaktionovs. Una Dolgilevica was the last European medallist at Cadet level, she took silver U70kg in 2019 and she was the first woman to medal.
