Lessons Learnt on Day One at Junior World Championships

It was a tough opening day for the Junior squad at the World Championships in Italy.

All fighters failed to make the final block of the competition, but there were plenty of promising starts for the youngsters.

There were some tough draws on the female side of the draw with both Tatum Keen and Sian Bobrowska encountering top seeded opponents in the early rounds.

Tatum Keen highlighted her growing development as she progressed through the opening round of the -52kg competition at the expense of Bulgaria’s Gabriela Dimitrova. A topsy-turvy contest saw Keen register waza-ari in the final minute and showed great contest management to see out the remaining 45 seconds.

The top seeded World No.1 Liliia Nugaeva awaited her in the second round. An excellent uchi-mata from the Russian eliminated Keen, but up until that point in the contest, the young Brit was very much an attacking force against her bigger opponent.

The luck of the draw also proved to be the downfall for Bobrowska as she came up against France’s World No.2 Chloe Devictor in the second round of the competition. Excellent work on the ground from Devictor allowed her to register ippon and eliminate the Brit.

Both Charlie Young and Finlay Allan showed great promise with Young progressing through to the third round of the -66kg category. Three Golden Score contests eventually tired Young as he was eliminated by Uzbekistan’s Abdulbosit Abdusalimov in a contest that really could have gone either way!

Young looked in good touch throughout the day as he once again despatched Turkey’s Muhammed Demirel in the opening round. It was a gruelling contest that went all the way to Golden Score following waza-ari scores from both fighters during regulation time. Young was able to follow up with Waza-ari-awasete-ippon to claim his first win of the day.

He followed this up brilliantly as he forced his way past Norway’s Gustav Brovold in the second round courtesy of another waza-ari score in Golden Score.

Finlay Allan looked sharp in his first round match against Kazakhstan’s Marlen Adil. He showed great perseverance on the mat as he eventually found a way to force Adil to submit to a choke.

He couldn’t find a way past Louka Loukas in the second round however as he was unfortunately disqualified from the fight due to endangering himself during a manoeuvre which resulted in elimination.

Tomorrow sees Oliver Short flying the British flag at the competition.

Preliminary rounds start at 9:00am (BST) on Thursday and Friday.

Final Block will begin at 15:00 (BST) on all days.

British Judo will bring you a recap of how all your British fighters perform each day and you can follow the action on the British Judo social media channels. You can also watch the action live on the British Judo homepage.