European Cadet Cup, Teplice, Czech Republic

This was my first competition back after injuring my knee eleven weeks ago.  After a hard week training at Dartford I seem to be back to speed quite quickly. The Czech Cadet Cup was the biggest European Cup so far and with most of Europes best fighters attending it was going to be a tough event.

Bye (First Round)

Flavio Di Marca (Belgium) First Fight

Flavio is a great Belgium fighter who has medaled in European cups before as well as a good silver medal in Bremen last year where he beat the number one Japanese fighter and the KAZ who won Romania Cadet Cup last year. It was a great start to the contest and I felt good . My transition was again working well and I won the fight with a strangle to get through to the next round.

Roy Koffiberg (The Netherlands) Second Fight

Roy is one of the top group of fighters they have at -55kg. They have the strongest group of fighters out of any country at this weight. I have only fought Roy in training and he is fast and technically excellent. Roy got the Silver medal in this event last year. I think I showed him far to much respect and was given a judo lesson. I know that I can do much better against him

Dominik Jurkovic (Croatia) Third Fight

Roy won his next fight which put me back in the competition. I was fast out for this next fight and jumped on a weak attack winning after arm locking Dominik.

Kiril Peev (Bulgaria) Fourth Fight

Kiril is a top fighter with many good victories behind him. It was a very hard fight but I got through to the next round winning with another arm lock.

Karo Marandain (Ukraine) Fifth Fight

Karo had recently won Silver medal at the Ukraine European Cup but I gave him a really tough fight. I was still fighting really well and nearly caught Karo with a couple of armlocks. It was a close fight that I lost on a dubious yuko right near the very end.

I was really pleased with my seventh place after such a long lay off.  I hope I have done enough to be selected for the ECC in June

Results: CZE European Cup

This weekend is the Czech European Cadet Cup. I am in a team of eighteen selected to represent England at the event. I have no great expectations after nine weeks off the mat, but it will be great to compete at this high level again. CZE is also one of the hard Top Ranking Cups on the calender. Hopefully a good performance here will help towards my chances with selection for the European Cadet Championships in June.

If you want to keep up with the draw and hopefully a live feed from the event then keep looking on this link.

Update:
An update on the EJU website says this will be the largest cadet European Cup ever. There are 20% more entries than any other event with over 800 judo players from 37 different countries already entered.

CZE Cadet Cup