November 2, 2019 – TK Marjan’s Lovre Brecic won the taekwondo silver medal at the European Senior Championships in Bari, Italy!
Sportnet.hr reports that Brecic was free in the first round of the 63 kg category, and in the second, he celebrated against Ukrainian Oleksandra Dziuba 18:8. In the fight for a medal, Brecic topped Russian Bolat Izutdinov 28:16.
Brecic routinely made it through the semi-final fight against Hungarian Levente Josz 30:12 and went on to reach the final where he awaited world champion and two-time European champion Jaouad Achab, whose victory against Brecic gave him his third European championship title.
This is Brecic’s second consecutive medal at the European Championships. Recall, last year in Kazan, he was the European Champion in the same category. With this silver medal, Brecic also won 24 points in the fight for the direct placement in the Tokyo Olympics next year, and the outcome will be known after the final Grand Prix in Moscow in early December.
With Brecic’s medal, Marjan Taekwondo Club has achieved a success that perhaps no other club in the world can boast. In the same year, its members won medals at five major competitions in four different age categories. Namely, Bruna Vuletic is bronze medalist at the World Senior Championships, Lovre Brecic is the silver medalist at the European Senior Championships, Klara Kovac, Lucija Domic and Paula Antunovic won the silver and two bronze medals at the European Junior Championships, Bruna Duvancic won the silver medal at the European Junior Championships, while Rea Kozlica and Emanuel Berisha took the silver at the European Cadet Championships. Eight medals in the same year, and over the next two days, Toni Kanaet, Nikita Glasnovic, Matea Jelic and Leon Glasnovic hope for medals and points for Tokyo.
Three more Croats performed on the first day of the European Championships. Namely, in the under 49kg category, Kristina Tomic, the current bronze medalist in the World Championships, lost in the battle for the medal to Germany’s Ele Aydin, Ana Taslak was stopped in the first round by Olympic silver medalist Tijana Bogdanovic, and Josip Teskera lost to Belarusian Yauheni Anushkevich.
Taekwondo was not included in the European Games this year, and this extra European Championship allows the athletes to make up for the points that other athletes around the world had the opportunity to earn at their continental games. The competition is held in five men’s and five women’s categories (4 men’s and 4 women’s Olympic plus one added category – men’s 63 kg and women’s 53 kg).
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