Tbilisi’s day-two spotlight: -57 kg chaos and a stacked -73 kg with Europe’s finest

Day two of the 2026 Senior European Championships in Tbilisi, Georgia (16–19 April) brings two divisions that feel tailor-made for drama: women’s -57 kg and men’s -73 kg. Both categories are packed with proven winners, and a lot of European hopes are riding on how these brackets break.

In women’s -57 kg, the arena will lean heavily toward Eteri Liparteliani. The hometown favourite is also Georgia’s first female world judo champion, and she arrives as top seed with the defending European champion Seija Ballhaus absent. Liparteliani’s European record already shines across cadet, junior, U23 and open level titles, but the senior individual crown is still the one missing piece.

This weight has been a yearly shake-up: a different champion has won every year for a decade.

She came close in 2025 with a runner-up finish, and home soil gives her a rare, emotional edge. Europe, though, brings serious resistance. France’s Sarah-Léonie Cysique, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallist and a recent Paris Grand Slam champion, is one of the biggest threats and has dominated most of their past meetings, even if Liparteliani took their most recent clash in late 2025. Italy’s Veronica Toniolo and France’s Martha Fawaz, both bronze medallists last year, return too, keeping the European pressure high.

Men’s -73 kg looks even more overloaded. Georgia’s Lasha Shavdatuashvili is still a central figure at 34, carrying a complete set of Olympic medals and entering his 14th senior Europeans. A potential generational collision with defending European champion Danil Lavrentev is already on everyone’s radar, especially with their rivalry split across recent editions.

The -73 kg draw reads like a roll call of the sport’s biggest titles.

And then comes the Paris 2024 Olympic podium in full: champion Hidayat Heydarov (Azerbaijan), silver medallist Joan-Benjamin Gaba (France), and bronze medallist Adil Osmanov (Moldova). Gaba, the reigning world champion and top seed, is looking to turn that status into another major result. Add Kosovo’s former European champion Akil Gjakova and Italy’s Manuel Lombardo—two-time world silver medallist and 2021 European champion—and suddenly there are very few “safe” matches anywhere in the bracket.

Source: EJU_News