Malaga debutes at European Open level

Malaga is one of the 25 cities where a World Cup will take place for the first time. The European Open, the former status of World Cups. Although Spain doesn’t host a World Cup for a first time, Madrid hosted a World Cup ten times from 2005-2018. In total 78 different cities hosted a World Cup event such as European Open, or the former A-tournaments. Sofia and Prague have hosted 32 World Cups and were always loyal event organisers to the European Judo Union.

Also Warsaw, Rome and Minsk have organized many World Cups. Same for Budapest and Tbilisi but in the last decade they made the transition to the IJF World Tour as a Grand Prix and even Grand Slam.

Malaga is a judo city that organized 9 European Cups since 2011 and two European Cup for Juniors. In 2000 it has organized the World University Championships. In 2016 the southern harbour city was organizer of the Junior Europeans. Four winners in 2016 of that generation became even World Champion: Daria Bilodid, Marie-Eve Gahie, Nemanja Majdov and Anna-Maria Wagner.

The event will this time host almost 400 potential top athletes from 35 countries. Spain will bring in some of their prospects like Ai Tsunoda the number one seed U70kg and some strong women in the lightweight categories. Spain is always well presented in the men’s U81kg category but also the lightweights U60kg have two seeded Spanish players.

Although there at very few top 30 World ranked players in Malaga, the event will still be competitive for the generation that might fight at the European U23 Championships in November in Budapest. Polish Agata Ozdoba-Blach is by far the highest seeded athlete (WRL-10) and the favourite for women U63kg. The European Open in Malaga is the best quality event in Spain this year and despite it’s the first time with a European Open status and it results in the most athletes ever in Malaga at a senior tournament. Malaga is the fourth European Open of this year, Prague, Zagreb and Sarajevo hosted the other three events. The 22 degrees outside the venue in Malaga will be attractive for many athletes to combine judo with some vitamins.