Experience gained on tough first day at Cadet Europeans

There were no medals on a tough first day of the 2018 Cadet European Judo Championships for GB Judo on Thursday 28 June in Sarajevo.

Despite that, there were a number of strong performances as the GB judoka looked to gain valuable competition experience.

Zachary Morrison (-50kg) and Artur Patemian (-55kg) had three fights each with both judoka having to come from a waza-ari down in their opening contests against Georgios Kesidis (GRE) and Georgios Rizkov (GRE) to win.

The two fighters then lost their second-round contests to Balint Gombas (HUN) and Abu-Muslim Parchiev (RUS) but had the opportunity to come through the repechage.

Unfortunately they were unable to secure a top seven placing as Morrison and Patemian lost to Cristian Miceli (ITA) and Guram Gasitashvili (GEO) respectively.

Sian Bobrowska (-48kg) proved too strong for Elena Dimitriou (CYP) in her first round contest, winning inside the opening minute. However, the British judoka was unable to get through Vladyslava Snitko (UKR) and went out in the second round.

At -44kg Mae Bostock went to golden score against Ivana Nikolic (SRB) but lost out on shidos. The same fate befell Charlie Young (-55kg) with Victor Van Gerven (NED) winning a tactical fight after over three minutes of golden score.

Ukraine’s Rostyslav Berezihnyi was too strong for Finlay Allan in the first round of -60kg.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for GB Judo with eight judoka stepping on the mat:

-52kg Tatum Keen

-52kg Hannah Wood

-57kg Darcie Hancocks

-57kg Leah Grosvenor

-63kg Mollie Game

-63kg Emily Cooper

-73kg Cameron Charles

-73kg Ryan Quigley

Competition starts at 0900 UK time with live stream via eju.net and the British Judo website. Follow @BritishJudo on Twitter for end of prelim and end of day medal updates