The Karate Mühlbach team.

Karate Mühlbach: “We have never been so successful”

Five athletes from Karate Mühlbach participated in the Italian Cup in Montesilvano this weekend. In the disciplines of kumite (combat) and kata (forms competition), the club won a total of three gold, two silver, and two bronze medals.

June 02, 2025

From: pm

The Italian Cup is the highlight of the season and the most important national competition for color belts. At the same time, this tournament is always a competition among coaches, as it reveals which karate club is doing the best work with young talent at the national level.

Things couldn't have gone better for Karate Mühlbach - of the four girls who took part in the Kumite discipline, all of them gave their all for Karate Mühlbach: Julia Mair (pupils, +47kg) won gold, as did Maria Peintner (pupils, -47kg), who won the exciting final with teammate Anna Gallmetzer.

Maria Peintner showed strong performances.

Sophie Unterpertinger (Juniors, +58 kg) also won gold, delivering arguably one of the most exciting competitions of the day. In the semifinals, she faced an opponent renowned at the national level for her technical skills. Only her ability to change her strategy during the fight allowed Sophie to advance to the final. There, she demonstrated once again that a fight isn't over until it's over – in the very last second, Sophie scored the winning shot and thus brought the title to South Tyrol. The thunderous applause in the arena demonstrated just how captivating this final fight was.

Strong team result

Due to illness, two medal hopefuls from Karate Mühlbach had to withdraw the day before the kata competition. Now it was up to the other athletes to give their all to win medals for Karate Mühlbach. Julia Mair achieved this impressively, taking second place, followed by Maria Peintner and Sophie Unterpertinger (both third place). Narrowly missing the podium were Anna Gallmetzer (2th place) and Jonas Malleier (3th place), who was participating in an Italian Cup for the first time and can be overjoyed with this placing, as even reaching the final of the top eight athletes is a hurdle that must be overcome at this level.

Julia Mair in action.

"We have never participated in the season highlight for colored belts with so few athletes – the reason for this is not only the cancellations due to illness, but primarily because some of our athletes have now become brown and black belts and are therefore no longer allowed to participate in this tournament," says coach Martin Pezzei, who adds: "This Italian Cup was the most successful Kumite tournament in the history of Karate Mühlbach; it couldn't have been better!"