Hidayet Heydarov takes the treble in Tel Aviv

The most spectacular final of the day was the one U73kg between Tohar Butbul of Israel and Hidayet Heydarov. Butbul could take the first gold medal of the tournament and third ever in history. In 2009 Alice Schlesinger won the title and Baruch Shmailov won in 2014. Against Hidayet Heydarov Butbul had to fight the European Junior Champion.

Butbul had a great start and scored a yuko in the first thirty seconds and that inspired the crowd even more. Heydarov came back and scored wazari in the second minute and continued with oseikomi  and finished the job of today.

Heydarov is the 13th ever to win all three European age titles for cadets, juniors and today U23 years. The Azeri was advised by Peter Seisenbacher to switch to U73kg and now he doesn’t regret that choice and seems to find his way in the senior category while he is just 19 years young.

Sakhavat Gadzhiev of Russia took the gold in the men’s U60kg. The Russian is performing at the highest level since he was a successful cadet and World Cadet Champion in 2009. Since then he won two European Cadet titles, bronze at junior level and this time gold at these U23 Europeans. Gadzhiev defeated Csaba Szabo in the final in Tel Aviv. After two minutes he scored wazari and a yuko not much later, good enough to counter out the contest.

The gold U66kg was for Denis Vieru, he has been entertaining the crowd the whole day with great moves and unorthodox judo. The Moldovan judoka won the gold against Manuel Scheibel. He is the first European U23 winner for his country since 2005 was Marcel Trudov. Now Vieru followed up this tremendous success for the small nation by defeating Manuel Scheibel of Germany in the final. All five of his contests were attractive with lively action and not the least opponents in a field of 37 men, the most crowded weight category of this championship.

The 13 triple European Champions

read the story on the women's event