Fame forever at stake at European Championships in Tel Aviv

Who are going to win the European titles. The decisions will be made in Tel Aviv this week where lots a top athletes will appear on the tatami. The continental championships held over the last few weeks are the regional warm up for the World Championships later this year in Baku, but Tel Aviv is not a warm up.

The European Championships in Tel Aviv will be high end quality with lots of attention in the Israelian media for the number one individual sport.

The Arena is sold out and looking forward to Israelian medals and for sure the home team will bring up a massive team. The Olympic medals of Gerbi and Sasson have had their success and judo is booming in the host nation.

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Each category is hard to predict. Some of the traditional European nations will be dominating when it comes to number of medals. France, Russia, Georgia and obviously as relative new country Israel. However new influences from Kosovo that will have serious medal chances in the women’s division and may snatch a medal in the men’s. The Belarus team have something to defend and to win. Furthermore there are lots of countries aiming for 1-2-3 medals such as Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Azerbaijan, Hungary,  Serbia and Slovenia. But the quality fields are close and it’s hard to predict who will become the 14 winners of European gold.

Even though there are World and Olympic Championships in the field, also some major names will be missed such as Robert Mshvidobadze Khasan Khalmurzaev, Alexander Wieczerzak, Michael Korrel, Teddy Riner, Darya Bilodid, Majlinda Kelmendi and Odette Giuffrida, Guusje Steenhuis but most of the top 5 World Ranking athletes will be in action. Also interesting if the new generation can surprise such as Romane Dicko or World Junior Champions such as Hidayet Heydarov, Matthias Casse, Zelym Kotsoiev, Amber Gersjes and last year’s runner up Giovanna Scoccimarro.

Obviously the seeded players are poised to have a stake in the medal distribution but outside those top seeds there will be a number of surprises. Dark horses…. Barely place for them, the top athletes will show their face in Tel Aviv. Although there are no Pan American or Asian influences the European Championships are traditionally the best continental championships as quite a number of top athletes in Asia don’t show up at Asian Championships.

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