Bad timing for European Mixed Team Championships

This week on Wednesday the European Mixed Team Judo Championships will take place in Ekaterinburg, Russia. A city that just co-hosted the FIFA World Championships, a city of located on the geographical borderline of Europe and Asia, and at the foot of the Ural Mountains, Ekaterinburg with a population of 1.4 million.

Since ten years this city, founded by a decree of Peter the Great, has a small judo culture. It organised Russian Championships but since last year the IJF Tour came by with the Grand Slam in 2017 and in recently in March the Grand Slam 2018 edition.

Now it’s time for the first senior Mixed Team Championships in European history. The regular European Team Championships were held in Russia a few times in 1996 in St. Petersburg, in 2008 in Moscow and in 2012 in Chelyabinsk and 2016 in Kazan, another World Cup city.

St. Petersburg will host 21 teams in the categories U73kg, U90kg and +90kg for men and U57kg, U70kg and +70kg for women. The Russian team may be one of the favourites as they can deliver top judoka in each weight category, but also Germany seems to have quite a complete team. Frankly speaking, most of the top athletes stay at home in this busy calendar and that gives the chance for other athletes, either second team, reserves of people on the way back in their careers. The French will have Automne Pavia in the team, Poland seems to have a nice mix between men and women and also the team of Belarus may have a good chance for a medal. With an eye on the next European Championships, in fact European Games in Minsk, Belarus is the one to watch.

Also Azerbaijan will have a competitive team, not with the top athletes, but still enough for a top position. The Mixed team championships don’t have the best place in the agenda and it’s because the championships couldn’t be combined with the regular Championships in Israel. Now only a few are interested despite the 21 teams. For the first edition, the date and city could have been a bit more strategical.

Last year at the World Mixed Team Championships in Budapest, France was the only European country to medal with bronze, Russia, Germany and Georgia finished fifth but all with strong teams, nothing compared to the current line-ups.