After almost three years, Kaja Kajzer returned to the podium at a Grand Slam event. The 26-year-old Slovenian won a bronze medal at the Tbilisi Grand Slam, where she had previously finished in an unfortunate fifth place in 2021 and 2024. This is the second bronze medal of this kind in her career and her first since moving up to the under-63 kg category.

The winner of this year’s home Ljubljana European Open, seeded seventh in the category, had a bye in the opening round of the under-63 kg division. In the second round, she defeated Belarusian Yana Makretskaya, throwing her successfully three times with the same technique.

Kaja’s quarterfinal opponent was the category’s second seed, Croatia’s Iva Oberan. After an evenly matched first half of the contest, the Slovenian judoka took the lead with yuko thanks to a successful foot technique. Despite being ahead, Kajzer remained the more active competitor until the end of the bout, and with around 20 seconds remaining, she added another yuko to the scoreboard with a low technique that had already served her well in her opening match. Then, with an arm lock, she definitively settled the question of who would advance to the semifinal just one second before the end of the bout.

In the semifinal, Kaja faced the 2024 world champion, Dutch judoka Joanne Van Lieshout. Kaja also started this bout excellently and, after one minute, successfully executed tai-otoshi for the fifth time in the tournament to take the lead with yuko. Once again, Kaja remained the more active of the two, while her opponent looked for an opportunity to counterattack. Although she did not find one, after three minutes she took advantage of one of the Slovenian’s low attacks and brought the contest into ne-waza, where she first attempted an arm lock and then focused on a hold-down, keeping Kaja pinned for 20 seconds to secure her place in the final.

Kaja was therefore left to fight for third place, facing French competitor Gaetane Deberdt, whom she had met only once before, eight years ago in the junior ranks, when she came out on top. And in Tbilisi, it was once again the Slovenian who celebrated victory. Kaja produced the decisive action just under a minute before the end of the bout, when she set up her grip nicely and lured the Frenchwoman into a trap. When Deberdt took the bait and attacked with uchi-mato, Kajzer executed a textbook counter and threw her onto her back. Although the referee on the mat initially awarded waza-ari, it was quickly upgraded to ippon, allowing Kaja to celebrate the bronze medal in Tbilisi, where the European Championships will take place from 16 to 19 April.

Alongside Kajzer, Nace Herkovič also performed well in Tbilisi. In the opening round of the under-81 kg category, he defeated the familiar Montenegrin Jahja Nurković after a close contest, and in the second round he beat Germany’s Tim Gramkow by ippon with just seven seconds remaining. After two wins, the athlete from Koroška was stopped in the round of 16 by Serbian competitor and eventual bronze medallist Mihajlo Simin.

Martin Hojak lost in the first round of the under-73 kg category to Georgian Bagrati Niniashvili, as did Gal Blažič on the opening day of the competition, when he had to concede defeat to another Georgian, Luka Gadelia.

The Slovenian performances in the Georgian capital will conclude tomorrow with Metka Lobnik in the under-78 kg category and Gal Bertalanič Žižek in the under-100 kg category.