The best BiH judoka Larisa Cerić won a bronze medal at the Grand Slam in Baku in the +78 kilogram category.

After recently justifying her role as the first favorite at the European Judo Open Sarajevo 2023, Cerić confirmed that she is in excellent shape with the result from Baku. At the prestigious competition, the popular Lara also won an additional 500 points for the Olympic norm, thus consolidating her position among the passengers for the Olympic Games that will be held in Paris in 2024.

"I am happy because I managed to win bronze at the Grand Slam tournament and to win another 500 points on the Olympic ranking list. The day was very difficult and tiring, I had five fights, in the first round I worked with the representative of Austria, after that with the representative of Serbia, and in the quarter-finals I was defeated by the representative of Japan and in the end I beat the representative of Italy in the rematch", Cerić said. .

In the fight for the third place, Cerić was better than Elis Startseva, who appeared in Baku as an "individual neutral competitor", who was born Russian.

"Four wins and one loss, I can say that I am satisfied, my form is slowly picking up, last week's result that I achieved in Sarajevo gave me a new wind at my back to achieve good results, and here I hope that the season of good results is open. By the end of the year, I still have the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam and the European Championship for seniors waiting for me," Larisa Cerić pointed out at the end.

In addition to Larisa Cerić, the sisters Aleksandra and Anđela Samardžić and Toni Miletić performed in Baku, and they all recorded one victory each and won 160 points each.

Along with our judokas in Baku, Arijana Jaha, general secretary of the Judo Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was in the role of coach.

Text source: Judo Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Photo source: IJF