Lulu Piovesana took a second gold medal in successive weekends yesterday (19th July) at the Junior European Cup in Poland. Also in action yesterday, Stuart McWatt celebrated his birthday with a gold in the -81kg category.

Piovesana has had a strong year so far, taking her fourth Junior European Cup gold this weekend, and the second in the space of two weeks. Piovesana had to overcome Kaho Yonezawa of Japan in the final of the -63kg category, doing so with a yuko score to take the gold medal.

Facing a strong field in the -81kg category, McWatt stormed through his five contests with four wins ippon wins. A win in the final against Joao Martinho of Portgual made it a double celebration for McWatt, who was also celebrating his eighteenth birthday.

Stuart McWatt said: “Going into the competition it looked tough, and I was fighting on my birthday so I didn’t want to lose first round. I felt good on the day, everything was on point and I beat one of my rivals in the semi-finals. It felt good to win especially after only getting bronze last week at the British Open.“

Alongside the gold medal successes, five other athletes made it onto the podium in Poland with bronze medals. Sam Hall and Eric Ham both stepped onto the podium on day one of the tournament, taking bronze in the -60kg and -73kg respectively. 

Continuing the team’s success on day two, Lucy Renshall stood alongside Piovesana on the -63kg podium with a bronze medal finish, with Jemima Yeats-Brown (-70kg) and Jodie Myers (+78kg) also adding to Britain’s medal tally with two more bronze medals.

Jodie Caller also finished in fifth place in the -57kg category, which saw Great Britain finish fifth in the overall medal table.

See the full results here >>>