Beka Gviniashvili captures European gold medal in thrilling final

Beka Gviniashvili has taken his third different European title. In Tel Aviv he finished the trilogy in a thriller final against Yahor Varapayeu of Belarus. Gviniashvili even called it a Junior tournament and was happy to test his pace back in the U90kg category.

Gviniashvili was of course the favourite in the category U90kg at the U23 European Championships. Stepping back one category after the Olympic Games, this was his first event and he had never won a medal at this championship while he won three Junior European titles and the Cadet title in the beginning of his career in 2011. But the Georgian warrior didn’t get it for free as the Belarussian scored first. Varapayeu led the match and it was waiting for an answer of Gviniashvili. In a sloppy attempt he seemed to score waza-ari but that was in the end not on the scoreboard. Not much later he took his chance and scored an wazari after all and built it out with an oseikomi to ippon. Not an easy day but with a satisfying result. In the semi final Gviniashvili defeated Nemanja Majdov of Serbia who won the bronze later on. Varapayeu won his pool and defeated Peter Zilka (SLV) in the semi final. Firudin Dadashov won the battle for bronze. Gviniashvili is the 14^th judoka ever to win the three European “age” titles. Now we just have to wait for the senior European title, because we know it will happen some day.

Gviniashvili: “I wanted to come back in my old weight category and I will be fighting for gold for Tokyo2020, this is a junior tournament. But I wanted to get a feel how it was to get back in this category. It was a nice chance to fight U100kg but the guys here are somewhat quicker, so in this case I didn’t want to rush and fight a more tactical tournament.“