Lukas Reiter is Austria's golden man U73kg in Oberwart

Austria celebrated gold at the European Open for men in Oberwart on Saturday with Lukas Reiter who was the best judoka in the weight category with the most participants. Reiter was the best of 58 athletes U73kg and took the gold after he won his final with a ippon for Ko-Uchi maki-komi against Telman Valiyev of Azerbaijan.

Lukas Reiter had to grow into the tournament with three victories by wazari but in the semi final he scored ippon against Arsen Ghazaryan and the final was even the fastest contest with just a minute on the score board. Giovanni Esposito and Roberto Meloni medalled for Italy.

With three finals Azerbaijan was clearly the best nation at day one. Orkhan Safarov was the expected winner U66kg. He is world class U60kg but wasn’t seeded as he doesn’t have enough points in U66kg, so even in this class he is able to win. Since his silver medal at the World Championships in Budapest he hadn’t fought U60kg. In the final he bested Kevin Azema of France. He won his first continental open medal in Europe, he won two in Africa. Azema was also silver medallist at the French Championships. Manuel Lombardo won bronze Vugar Shirinli added another medal for Azerbaijan.

U60kg another Azeri won gold, Mehman Sadigov. In the final he overcame Gamzat Zairbekov of Russia. Sadigov won his first four battles by ippon but in the final he scored waz-ari halfway the match and controlled the contest until the end without further scores.

On Sunday the Austrian team hopes to add more medals. Reiter was the first Austrian to win the category U73kg ever, but in 1994 Norbert Haimberger won U71kg in Leonding. A second gold medal can equal the bets performance of this century for Austria in 2001 when Franz Birkfellner and Ludwig Paischer both took gold.