LEAH Grosvenor and Olivia Turner have been by far Worcestershire’s most successful judo players in 2016 and both travelled into Europe last weekend to have a go at two major competitions.

First stop on Saturday was Holland for the Open Zeeuws Judokampioenschap.

This was the first time British players have entered this event, which had around 600 entrants from five different countries.

First up to fight was 14-years-old Leah. As the current British Champion, Scottish Open Champion, Welsh Open Champion, Midlands Open Champion, North-West Open Champion and Heart of England Champion, Leah has now been unbeaten in Britain for over a year, only the second local player ever to go for a year unbeaten whilst attending all the major events.

Leah had four contests in her own age band, under 15, and won all four by maximum points.

The organisers gave her special dispensation, not usually granted in Europe, to also enter the under 18 age band.

Three wins took her into the final where she lost on a single penalty, although may have been denied victory after the ref appeared to miss a score to Leah.

Olivia Turner has out-stripped everybody in terms of number of medals won this year, her tally stood at 23 medals in 2016, an incredible lead of 12 medals on Luke Mole in second place in the Worcestershire medals table.

Olivia memorably won the European Special Needs Kata Championship, partnering Luke Mole, and the European SN Contest Championship in both juniors and seniors as well as the British Open SN Championships, gold at all of these.

Olivia’s problem, apart from being in the first year of her new cadet age band, is that she is right at the bottom of the open weight category and so is usually up against much heavier opponents.

Her first opponent was neatly thrown and held for maximum points. Her second was a much closer match, with Olivia winning on a penalty after dominating the contest, and her third resulted in another maximum point win, again on the ground.

This put her into the final against a Dutch black belt. Most of the contest was dominated by grip fighting, with the black belt very wary of allowing Olivia to grip up, and as Olivia pressed she was caught with a neat throw for a low score. A second score with just seconds left to go was followed up by a hold against Olivia and so she had to settle for silver.

Day two of the weekend saw the team move to Antwerp in Belgium for the Jeugdtrofee Thibaut Van Roeyen.

This was an under 18 years event, so again Leah was out of her normal age group.

She reached the quarter-finals easily, won the quarter-final quickly on the ground, and then faced a massive battle in the semi-final, which she won superbly with a late score to put herself into the final. This was another very tight match but unfortunately the only score was against Leah and she had to settle for silver.

Olivia again had some very large opponents but she fought her way into the final for the second day running.

The final was a very close match with Olivia just losing out in the end and finishing, like Leah, with silver.