Women’s 81 kg
There wasn’t a huge amount of interest in this non-Olympic category – apparently, it was shown on Belarus TV but it didn’t seem to be available anywhere else. It did give us an entertaining battle between Nina Schroth (Germany), Eleni Konstantinidi (Greece) and Anna Vanbellinghen (Belgium). Vanbellinghen won the snatch gold with 103, one kilo ahead of the German and six kilos up on the Greek. However, the tables were turned in the clean and jerks. Schroth could only manage 120 and Vanbellinghen missed her second and third attempts at 121 to fall out of contention for the gold. Konstantinidi hit all three lifts at 119, 124 and 126 to overtake the others for the total gold.
Women’s 87 kg
As this group started, there looked to be four lifters in the running but an early injury for Kinga Kaczmarczyk (Poland) and misses on first and second attempts for Tatev Hakobyan (Armenia) left the two Russian competitors to fight each other for gold. Kseniia Paskhina and Diana Mstieva were neck and neck on snatch with 110. On clean and jerks, Mstieva missed two to Paskhina’s one and that ended up being decisive. Kseniia Paskhina ended up with a 242 total, two kilos up on her teammate
Men’s 96 kg
When last year’s 94 winner Nicolae Onica (Romania) opened light and nevertheless bombed, it seemed like this might not be a great group to watch. How wrong we were! Yauheni Tsikhantsou (Belarus) won all three golds quite comfortably in the end but there was a fantastic tussle for the other medals between Russians Egor Klimonov and Khetag Khugaev, Kyryl Pyrohov (Ukraine) and Anton Pliesnoi (Georgia), how had loud support from his home crowd.
Pliesnoi took the snatch silver, to the delight of most of the audience while Pyrohov delivered Ukraines first medal of the competition with the bronze. On clean and jerks, Pliesnoi put himself in with a chance of another silver with 204 but Klimonov, after missing his first lift at 205, managed 206 and 210 to overhaul him. Khugaev tried some big jumps to earn a medal but could not make them stick.
Yauheni Tsikhantsou waited until pretty much everyone else was done before opening with 204 before moving to 210 to set a European U23 Clean and Jerk record and then taking a huge jump to 222 to set new European senior Clean and Jerk and total records (video).
As well a couple of outrageous saves from Georgios Markoulas (Greece) (video) and Yauheni Tsikhantsou (video), we saw Pawel Szmeja (Poland) become the latest victim of tighter oscillation refereeing on his first clean and jerk.
Records
- Yauheni Tsikhantsou (Belarus) European Senior Clean and Jerk 222
- Yauheni Tsikhantsou (Belarus) European Senior Total 400
- Yauheni Tsikhantsou (Belarus) European U23 Clean and Jerk 222
Yauheni Tsikhantsou (Belarus) European U23 Total 400
Medal Table
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | |
| Belarus | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| Romania | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| Russia | 6 | 12 | 3 |
| Turkey | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Italy | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| Bulgaria | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Latvia | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| Georgia | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| Armenia | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| France | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Poland | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Greece | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Spain | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| Albania | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Belgium | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Germany | 0 | 4 | 3 |
| Great Britain | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Sweden | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Austria | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Israel | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Ukraine | 0 | 0 | 1 |