Serbia has got the vibe: gold for Milica Nikolic

Serbian lightweight Milica Nikolic became the first gold medallist at the Zagreb Grand Prix as she defeated Tallinn European Open gold medallist Noa Minsker of Israel to secure her maiden IJF title.

Nikolic is part of a nine-strong Serbian team in Croatia and gave her team an ideal start as she threw Minsker for ippon with an ouchi-gari after exactly 80 seconds and will now be waiting patiently for the new IJF World Ranking List to be released on Monday after picking up 300 points. Nikolic was in no mood for being generous and yet another ippon dashed any hopes of an Israeli win. Nikolic took her third IJF World Tour medal of 2016 and looks well set as a force in the weight category.

In the first semi-final Nikolic surpassed Orenburg European Cup winner Anastasia Pavlenko (RUS) by waza-ari awasette-ippon with two minutes left of the regulation four minutes. In the second semi-final Minsker, who produced a beautiful ippon seoi-nage to defeat home fighter Sara Matijevic (CRO) in the first quarter-final of the competition, countered an uchi-mata from Tallinn European Open runner-up Ewa Konieczny (POL) after 26 seconds of golden score for a match-winning waza-ari as her coach Shany Hershko jumped out of his chair in celebration.

The first bronze medal contest was won by 20-year-old German European Cup bronze medallist Cheyenne Mounier (FRA) who could become France’s number one at this weight. The youngster defeated Konieczny after six seconds of golden score as what both judoka failed to achieve in the regulation four minutes, in threatening the scoreboard, Mounier instantly accomplished in added time with a sode-tsurikomi-goshi for a yuko score. The second bronze medal was won by 25-year-old IJF World Judo Tour debutant Fjolla Kelmendi (KOS), the cousin of Olympic champion Majlinda Kelmendi, who stylishly defeated Pavlenko. The Kosovo judoka was making her return to the competition after four years away from the sport where she focused purely on her academic studies. Kelmendi was cheered on by her heroic cousin – who at the end of the day came to the tatami in her judogi for a special session with young judoka – and took the lead with a yuko from a tani-otoshi before making sure of victory with one second left as she countered the Russian with a osoto-makikomi and screamed with delight as she started her IJF career with a fine performance.