The Junior Team Arrives in Europe for Competing in the World Junior Championship
The event will be held between 23rd -27th October, in Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia
The eighteen athletes who will represent Brazil in the World Junior Championships in Ljubljana arrived in Europe on Friday, 18/10. They boarded last Thursday. The World Junior Championships will be held from 23rd to 27th of this month in the capital of Slovenia. Among the eighteen summoned athletes, ten of them are head-keys in the tournament. Tawany Silva ( 44kg/SP ) , Gabriela Chibana ( 48kg/SP ) , Flavia Gomes ( 57kg/SP ) , Jessica Santos ( 63kg/SP ) , Samantha Soares ( 78kg/SP ) , Vitor Torrente ( 55kg/SP ) , Ricardo Santos Junior ( 66kg/MG ) , Henry Silva ( 90kg/SP ) , Gabriel Gouveia ( 100kg/SP ) , Ruan Silva ( +100 kg / RJ ) were Pan-American champions in July, in Buenos Aires, which gave them a supposedly less difficult path to the podium. The other Brazilian representatives in the World Judo Championship will be Nathália Brígida (48kg/MG ), Jessica Pereira ( 52kg/RJ ), Camila Barreto ( 57kg/RS ) , Sibilla Facholli ( +78 kg / SP ), Nicolas Santos ( 60kg/SP ), Gabriel Pinheiro ( 66kg/PE ), Gabriel Mendes (73kg/RJ ) and Gustavo Assis ( 81kg/MG ).
Besides Brazil, other world judo forces led large delegations to the Championship. France (20 athletes), Japan (19), Russia (20), Italy (18), Canada (19), Kazakhstan (21), Slovenia (20), Ukraine (20), the United States (20) - among the Americans, Sophia Swain ( 70kg ), Chiaki Ishii’s granddaughter, will take part in the competition. Azerbaijan and Georgia come to the contest only with their men’s team, but there will be ten athletes. According to the schedule, on 23rd October, the competing categories will be the super lightweight and the extra lightweight ones. On 24th, the half lightweight and the lightweight athletes will step on the mat. The next day, the half middleweight and middleweight come on stage and on Saturday, 16/10, the heavyweight and heavyweight will give their best. On Sunday the team competition will delight the audience. The fights begin at 10 a.m. and the final block at 5 p.m. (Ljubljana Time Zone) in the Sports Hall Stozice.
Brazil won 44 medals in the World Junior Championships: 11 gold, 12 silver and 21 bronze awards. The first of them was won by Roberto Machusso (70kg) who won silver at the World Judo Championship in Rio de Janeiro in 1974. The first gold came with Aurélio Miguel ( 95kg ) in Mayaguez ( PUR) in 1983 . In the last World of the category held in 2011 in Cape Town, South Africa, Brazil managed to get two medals: silver by Agueda Silva ( 44kg ) and bronze by Allan Kuwabara ( 60kg ). On both occasions the country had five medals, which is a record in the competition: in Cali 1998 - Tiago Camilo ( 66kg /gold), Fabiane Hukuda ( 52kg / silver) , Danielle Zangrando ( 57kg / silver) , Rafael Rocha ( 100kg / silver) and Daniel Hernandes ( +100 kg / bronze ) - and in Bangkok 2008 - Sarah Menezes ( 48kg / gold ) , Rafaela Silva ( 52kg / gold ) , Mayra Aguiar ( 70kg / silver) , Camila Minakawa ( 63kg/bronze ) and Victor Penalber ( 73kg / bronze) .
Among the summoned athletes, four judokas were awarded at World Youth Championships. Flavia Gomes took the gold, Henrique Silva the silver and Samanta Soares the bronze in Budapest 2009. In Kiev 2011, Tawany Silva was the champion among her super extra-lightweight rivals.
