While Alice Schlesinger’s gold medal at the Baku Grand Slam was arguably the highlight of the GB Judo weekend there were British judoka in action at the Zagreb Cadet European Cup and Uster-Zurich Senior European Cup on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 March.

In Croatia, Highland Budokan’s Josie Steele was the sole British medallist with a well-earned silver medal at -57kg coming through six fights in total. The Scottish judoka won her first three contests by ippon with wins over Cathrine Haestrup (DEN) and Nikolett Nyiri (HUN) both coming in under a minute.

She then came through a golden score quarter-final against Lara Cvjetko (CRO) before seeing off Noa Hooi (NED) for a spot in the final. There she took on 2016 Cadet European silver medallist Alexandra Maroti (HUN) and gave her a tough fight before losing in golden score as she picked up a third shido.

There were a couple of near misses as Amy Platten (-44kg) and Yasmin Javadian (-52kg) just missed out on adding a third Cadet European Cup medal this year as they lost in their bronze medal contests. There were also seventh place finishes for Jasmine Hacker-Jones (-52kg) and Holly Jones (-63kg).

In Switzerland Laure Fournier (-57kg) picked up a bronze medal at the Senior European Cup with some impressive judo along the way. She saw off Silvia Pellitteri (ITA) and Pauline Wulff (GER) scoring three waza-ari in each contest before losing out to Anna Righetti (ITA) in the semi-final.

She bounced back however to claim the bronze medal as she beat Miriam Boi by waza-ari and ippon.

Peter Vincent was also in action in Uster-Zurich as he finished fifth at +100kg losing to Russia’s Roman Bobikov in the bronze medal match.

GB judoka will next be in action at the Casablanca African Open and Coimbra Junior European Cup this weekend on Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 March.