The fact that Nikolina NISAVIC (SRB/-52) took up judo was pure coincidence. At the age of eight, her parents urged her to take up the sport. “Because there were judo classes at school, I gave it a try.” Nikolina has been wearing the black and white club colours of Partizan Belgrade ever since. On Thursday, the 20-year-old was crowned European Juniors champion. “Now I also want a World Championships medal in Dushanbe at the beginning of October!”
Nikolina Nisavic and the European Championships Juniors have been anything but a success story so far: the 20-year-old Serbian has been on the mat for a whole 5:52 minutes at her previous European Championships appearances in The Hague 2023 and Prague 2022. Both times she lost her opening bouts and was eliminated. “You can imagine how nervous I was before my opening fight in Tallinn. I wanted everything but to lose again.”
19:19 net fighting minutes and four fights later, the Serbian stood on the podium with the gold medal around her neck and shed her first tears of joy during the national anthem. “To be honest, I would have been happy with a top-7 finish. I didn’t waste a minute thinking about gold. Yes, I’ve already won three Junior European Cups, but you can’t compare that to European Championships Juniors. The competition is far greater there.”
Even more astonishing than the victory itself was the way in which Nisavic won the final in 84 seconds. “I’m really bad at ground fighting and have never actually been able to win with it, at least not at international level. But the first opportunity came in the final for gold and I took it.” Postscript: “Maybe I’m slowly making friends with Ne Waza after all. Unbelievable, but true.”
In any case, the curse of the European Championships Juniors is history. Nobody will take the gold medal away from Nikolina.
Author: EJU Media