Shalva Gureshidze takes it all this year

Shalva Gureshidze of Georgia is the new Junior World Champion in the heavyweight class. In the final he defeated Ibrahim Tataroglu. Gureshidze is now Junior European and World Champion as well as European Champion with the team of Georgia. That promises a lot for tomorrow where Japan will be the challenger.

Turkiye had serious arguments to make on the morning of the last day of competition in Odivelas, with two talented judoka, Ibrahim Tataroglu and Munir Ertug. It is difficult to imagine that Tataroglu is still a cadet, since during the month of August he became cadet world champion in Zagreb. It is just as difficult to imagine that a few months ago he won a bronze medal at the Antalya Grand Slam 2023. He’s a baby, one could say, but a baby of impressive size and ability who today demonstrated that he had everything he needed to be great.

Tataroglu threw a first shido away for stepping out of the contest area. More focussed, Gureshidze seemed to be more ready. With the first seoi-otoshi, he scored a waza-ari, followed by an immobilisation for ippon. The gold medal was for Gureshidze to conclude the individual tournament. There must be a special mention for Tataroglu, still a cadet and already in the final of the junior worlds and in a heavyweight category, no less.

A tone below but nevertheless efficient, Munir Ertug qualified to fight for the first bronze medal, against Ramazan Ahmadov (AZE). It took the normal time, the golden score and three shido to decide the winner, Munir Ertug, for the second medal for Türkiye in the category.

Grzegorz Teresinski (POL) and Giannis Antoniou (CYP) still had a chance to reach the podium. Antoniou was probably the most expected athlete to reach the podium and after a very good competition day, he managed to put in one more effort to counter-attack one of Teresinski's seoi-nage attacks, that lacked preparation, for waza-ari. A little tactical work later to keep that score and Giannis Antoniou became a junior world championship bronze medallist.