The premiere judo tournament of Greece was held this weekend, also known as the “Iliadis Cup” with a total of 233 male and 132 female athletes from 26 counties! The competition is part of the IJF World junior Tour and the European Judo Union Junior Calendar and has become one of the strongest competitions in the Judo calendar.
Day 1 saw Cyprus coming away with a gold medal from Sofia Asvesta in the womens -52Kg category where she beat athletes Lee Cohen from Israel in the first round, Giulia Gonini from Italy in the second, Paz Kafri from Israel in the semi-final and Zeliha Cinci from Turkey in the final in “a golden score” with a waza-ari.
Congratulations to Sofia on winning the category!
Left to Right Silver: Zeliha Cinci (Turkey), Gold: Sofia Asvesta (Cyprus), Bronze: Kader Divan (Turkey) & Paz Kafri (Israel)
Vasiliki Kouri took 7th place in the women’s -48Kg where she beat Spyridoula Antoniou from Greece, Glafira Borisova from Russia (in 27 seconds) and Keren Weiss from Israel before losing out to Glafira Borisova from Bugaria in the second round of the Repechage who went on to take the bronze.
A a very tough competition we also had good results, though no medals from Charis Iordanou (-48Kg), Georgia Kokkides (-57Kg) and Maria Livadiotou (-57Kg).
Now over to the men.
Loucas Louca (-60Kg) lost in a very close contest to Mikheili Begievi from Georgia in one of the biggest categories of the tournament.
The -66Kg category was the largest category of the tournament with 46 athletes in total. Here we were represented by Dato Matsoukatov who beat Yordan Ilchev from Bulgaria in the first round and Dimitrios Markou from Greece in the second round before losing to Jan Svoboda from the Czech Republic.
Day 2 saw some excellent performances from our athletes.
Janet Michaelidou in the -78Kg category came 5th after losing her first contest to Anna Fortunio from Italy in her and then beating Maria Rizou from Greece in here second before losing to Marlene Hunger from Austria who eventually took the Bronze.
Competing in the -81Kg category was Anastassios Charalambous who fought a very tough match against Evangelos Kalogirou from Greece before losing by an Ippon.
In the -100Kg category we had two athletes. Orestis Aresti and Giorgios Kroussanotakis. Oresti came up against Nurlykhan Sharkhan from Kazakhstan who beat him with an Ippon. Giorgios won his first contest against Sagi Hailo from Israel but lost his second against Shpati Zekaj from Kosovo. In the Repechage Giorgios beat the Turkish athlete Mehmet Talay, Giorgios won with an Ippon in the third minute and before losing to Hugo Garel from France who eventually took the 5th place, with Giorgos coming in 7th place.
The Iliadis Cup is one of the toughest championships in the Junior calendar and the Federation is very pleased with the progress that it is making with its athletes.
The Federation would also especially like to thank the National Coach Lavrentis Alexanidis who accompanied our athletes and was a great help in their performances over the weekend.
Refereeing from Cyprus was IJF Referee Kakia Lymperi and Cyprus National Referee Giorgos Hadjithoma who was taking part in his first international tournament.
We would like to congratulate all the athletes that took part and represented Cyprus, especially Sofia Asvesta who brought us home a gold!!!
Onwards and upwards to even more international medals.
