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Bronze at DM in Hamburg: JC Leipzig clearly misses the final
In the end, the Leipzig judoka were left behind.
© Source: Klaus Martin
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Hamburg. It didn’t work out with the finals and the dream of gold at the German Championships for the Judo Club Leipzig. The JCL lost at the Final Four on Saturday in the semifinals against the host JT Hamburg with 4:10 (2:5/2:5). After all, the judoka around the Cuban world champion Andy Granda had already secured bronze beforehand.
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The conditions were great, the people of Leipzig arrived on Friday with more than 100 fans and had everyone on board except for the former top performer and coach Simon Yacoub, who was absent for personal reasons – including two guest starters, the manager Stefan Schulze specially brought from Moldova. But on the tatami, the trade fair townsfolk didn’t do enough. In the first fight, JCL man Daniel Herbst was clearly defeated by German-Spanish Dario Kurbjuweit Garcia 0:7. After that, Petru Pelivan, one of the Moldovans, won his duel with a hamburger 10-0, as did Granda afterwards. However, as a result, Leipzig’s Florian Pachel had just as little chance against his opponent as later Lennart Slamberger, Richard Fiedler and Emil-Johann Hennebach. So it was 5:2 for the home side at the break.
Kirsten: “Nevertheless, we are very happy about bronze”
In the second section, the victory of JCL top talent Lenny Burk, two-time U18 German Championship winner, against Hamburg Olympic starter Moritz Plaffky via Waza-ari could have been the turning point in the semi-finals. But then Granda surprisingly lost against Daniel Yannik Eich from Hamburg and Chris Lammers, Hannes Conrad and Dorin Gotoanaga also failed to win – after Herbst had lost the first fight in his second duel with Kurbjuweit Garcia. Again the round went 5:2 and the match overall 10:4 to Hamburg, who then lost 5:9 to the series champion Abensberg in the final.
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“That looks clear on paper, but you have to consider that we went into overtime five times,” sums up René Kirsten. The JCL veteran refrained from actively participating in the fights in favor of Herbst, but kept the team together on site outside of it. “Nevertheless, we’re really happy about bronze,” said Kirsten, who announced a joint team evening in a Hamburg restaurant. Big celebrations – for example on the Reeperbahn – were not wanted in view of the lost semifinals and because the return to Leipzig was on Sunday at 8 a.m.
The season in the Bundesliga is over for the JCL, but the transfer market will open on December 1st. The Leipzig team want to strengthen themselves there for the coming season in order to at least make it to the final of the next Final Four. “We will definitely attack again next year,” says René Kirsten.
