BASINGSTOKE’S Shelley Ludford won a silver medal for GB Judo on her European Open debut at Emirates Arena in Glasgow.

This week, the teenage is on the hunt for world medals in the Bahamas at the World Junior Championships.

In Glasgow, Ludford fighting in the under 78 kg weight lost out in close final to the Netherland’s Ilona Lucassen.

Ludford has only be competing at this weight for less than a year and the 19-year-old from Basingstoke had little trouble against Australia’s Melanie Wallis as she threw her waza-ari and finished the fight in osaekomi.

Her newaza came to the fore in her next two contests as she forced both Spain’s Laia Talarn and Hungary’s Anett Meszaros to tap from shime-waza (strangles).

This set up a final against Lucassen and the Dutch judoka took the win thanks to a single waza-ari score.

Despite missing out on gold, Ludford was not too disheartened with the result and said: “I’m really happy with my performance today, especially my semi fight, beating the Hungarian, I was really happy with that.

“I won a lot in newaza today but just shows that my technical sessions are working.

“I didn’t expect to get into the final. I know it’s bad, but I literally didn’t have any nerves the night before. I just wanted to go out there, perform my best and I did.”

Ludford’s silver helped Great Britain finish second in the medal table overall behind France.