The fifth and last day of judo at the European Youth Olympic Festival was reserved for the mixed teams competition. Precisely, 22 teams entered the field of play this morning to fight for a spot on the podium in Maribor. Last year at the EYOF in Banska Bystrica (SVK), Azerbaijan won first place. This year, once again, everything seemed to be set for another Azeri victory, however, their calculation did not include having to face a dominating Turkish team who conquered the final with an overall score 4:2.
After the distribution of medals, the celebration was still going on, Yunus YAZGAN, a competitor in the -73kg category, joined us for a moment and shared with us the impressions of the whole team.
I’m really happy, it was a tough match against Azerbaijan, they are our brothers and sisters so in a kind of way I’m also sad for them. The day was really amazing, we did it, Türkiye is EYOF Champion and we are very proud of our result. When we were coming here, we only wanted to get gold medal. Atmoshpere at European Youth Olympic Festival is so great, lot of positive energy, sharing experiences with other sports so we couldn’t win this title at better place than this. The whole Festival was just perfect. I won today gold medal with my team and bronze in individual part of competition.
Bronze medals were won by team Ukraine and Georgia. This concludes another European Youth Olympic Festival.
The European Olympic Committees (EOC) announced that the capital of North Macedonia, Skopje, will host the XVIII European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) in 2025. North Macedonia will become the 25th country to host the EYOF, and the 16th to host its summer edition. The decision was confirmed during the EYOF in Maribor, where thousand of the best young European athletes are competing in 11 sports these days.
Author: Mario Krvavac