Havana, March 8 (ACN) - Judoist Jonathan Charon registered the best performance for Cuba in the first day of the Grand Prix (GP) of Austria, a competition that counts with the presence of more than 520 judoists from 78 countries, in search of points for the world ranking.

According to the official site of the International Federation www.ijf.org, the young Charón lost by waza-ari-awasete-ippon in the third round of preliminaries of the 60 kg, against the Spanish Francisco Garrigós, first in the RM, sixth in the Olympic and multi-champion of the orb.

 In his debut, the Caribbean native defeated Israel's Lior Rafailov by wazari and in the second round he beat Germany's Maximilian Heyder by the same way,

For Charon this has been the best performance in his fourth top-level commitment so far this year with his sights set on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, after saying goodbye early in the Grand Slam of Paris, Tashkent and Baku, in that order.

This Friday, Orlando Polanco (66 kg) also competed for Cuba and lost in his debut by hansoku-make in Golden Rule against German Martin Setz.

This Saturday, Cuba will be represented by Maylín del Toro (63 kg) and Magdiel Estrada (73 kg), while on Sunday, Ivan Silva (90 kg), Andy Granda (+100 kg) and Idalis Ortiz (+78 kg) will compete.

These seven Cubans, plus Idelannis Gómez (70 kg) and Lianet Cardona (78 kg), are training in France (f) and Hungary (m), and previously competed in the Grand Slams of Paris, Baku and Tashkent, but none of them made it to the podium, with the highlights going to Del Toro, seventh in Paris, and Silva, fifth in Baku and Tashkent.