By Brian Oliver
Andreea Cotruta held on for victory in a dramatic finish to the women’s 59kg to become Romania’s second female winner at the 2025 European Championships in Chisinau, Moldova. The day’s other champion was Kaan Kahriman, who earned his first senior victory and a third title of the week for Turkiye.
There was also a remarkable, medal-winning return to the international stage for a multiple European champion from Latvia. In the five and a half years since her last competition, Rebeka Ibrahima (formerly Rebeka Koha) married, converted to Islam, moved to Qatar and had two children. Ibrahima made all six lifts to finish third behind Cotruta and the double Olympian Nina Sterckx from Belgium.
“Of course this is not my best result, but I’m so happy because it’s up there with my best performances in the circumstances,” she said. “Now I’m moving forward. It’s next stop Norway for the World Championships (in October) and I’m hoping for great things there.”
Ibrahima finished only 2kg behind Cotruta and 1kg behind Sterckx after the top two went head-to-head and both failed with their final two attempts. Saara Retulainen from Finland, who had been expected to challenge for the title, bombed out in snatch, failed with her first two clean and jerks, then made the last one to take gold in that discipline on 115kg.
Sterckx, now coached by the American Wil Fleming, made only her openers, while Cotruta went one better with three good lifts. Sterckx took snatch gold in making 94-113-207, missing at 117kg and 120kg.
Cotruta – whose illustrious former team-mate Loredana Toma was co-commentating on the live TV broadcast to Romania – failed at 118kg and 120kg but won on 94-114-208. Nobody outside the top three reached the 200kg mark.
The last time Ibrahima (then Koha) opened and totalled as low as today was at the 2016 European Juniors. She won two senior continental titles, four as a junior, two as a youth, was twice junior world champion and finished fourth at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games when she was still a teenager. Her last result on the IWF database was in December 2019. Ibrahima lifted at the Qatar Cup four years later but a comeback was impossible because her second daughter was on the way.
She was coached throughout her glory days by Eduard Andruskevics, Latvia’s head coach, and is back with him. “He is the most amazing coach and without him I wouldn’t be here now,” she said. “I would never be coached by anybody else. And his wife has been great – like my weightlifting mum.
“I’m so grateful to the people around me. I could never have done this without my husband, his mother, and my own parents helping with the kids. There have been times when I’ve gone to the gym with both of them – the youngest is one, the oldest will be three next month.”
Ibrahima went back and forth between her home in Qatar and her former home in Latvia. “I’ve been preparing for this for about eight and a half months,” she said. “I’m surprised I did so well after being away for so long. All that family support helped me through.”
Kahriman’s victory at 67kg was no surprise. The double European junior champion excelled as a teenager, setting youth world records in snatch at 61kg, then claiming the junior 67kg snatch world record four months ago at the World Championships in Bahrain, where he was fifth.
He is now 20 – the youngest winner to date in Chisinau – and will move up to 71kg when the weight categories change in June.
“New weight, new records, that’s the aim,” Kahriman said after posting 146-170-316. He failed with an attempt at the European snatch record on 151kg and also missed his final clean and jerk on 173kg. “I’ve done 150-178 in training, and I’ll be going for more at the World Championships,” he said.
Isa Rustamov from Azerbaijan was second on 138-170-308 and Kahriman’s team-mate Ferdi Hardal was third on 140-165-305.