Jonathan Allardon follows golden footsteps of Legrand and Etienne

French Jonathan Allardon won the European title U23. Allardon is the third French European U23 champion in the history. Johann Etienne (2006) and Ugo Legrand (2008) won the title previously. In the final he met with Italian Andrea Regis. Also the Italians have a reputation in this category where Giuseppe Maddaloni won the Olympic title in 2000. All three European U23 titles by the Italian men were collected in this category.

Regis lost the final last year against Damian Szwarnowiecki and was the most experienced of the two in European finals. Both fighters are clearly good at senior level and both won European Cup and Open medals.

After almost two minutes it was the Frenchman to score first (waza-ari). Regis picked up two penalties. Last year he led the final, but got surprised, now it was the other way around. But with two minutes to go he came back in the match scoring waza-ari too and Allardon got penalised as well as Regis and that made the difference in the end. Regis couldn’t get close enough to Allardon who took the gold. It was his fourth victory after defeating Fedosejenkovs (Latvia), Galuaev (RUS) and Parlati, Italy’s second ace.

In the match for bronze Italian Enrico Parlati battled with Sam van ‘t Westende of the Netherlands. Van ‘t Westende took the lead halfway the match by wazari but got strangled on the ground by the Italian who successfully won the bronze. It was his first European medal in this age category, previous Parlati won four European medals at European Cadet and Junior Championships.

Russian Felix Galuaev was the first to score in the bronze final against Axel Clerget of France. However a yuko distance the Frenchman kept dangerous and Galuaev kept his own game and scored a wazari tp make things clear. He never gave away that lead and took the fifth medal for Russia.

The Russian medalled three times this year in European Cups and was the highest seeded athlete. Via victories over Jecminek (CZE), Mirkovic (SRB), Kiss (HUN) and Clerget (FRA) he won Italy’s fourth medal.