Debutant and his Master

Lion Cup is not only about top athletes fighting for the right to represent Ukraine at NEMIROFF WORLD CUP 2013. It is not only about taking revenge for failures at the Championship of Ukraine and many other local events. For the brave ones Lion Cup is also a chance to make their debut. An athlete of Kharkiv region, Michailo Sarapulov, decided to debut in the category of 86 kg this year. He appeared in the company of Rustam Babayev. As we talked, it turned out that Michailo started training armwrestling only six months ago. It’s not a long period of time taken into consideration the fact that his opponents included Petro Margarit, Ruslan Tcherniavsky, Eduard Matiash, Igor Apiary and Mger Musaelian.

They dominated the category of 86 kg for the right hand.
SENIOR MEN RIGHT 86kg
1 MARGARIT, PETRO, Odessa Oblast
2 RUSLAN, TCHERNIAVSKY, Khmelnytskyi Oblast
3 MATIASH, EDUARD, Ternopil Oblast
4 PASIEKA, IGOR, Ternopil Oblast
5 MUSAELIAN, MGER, Mikolaiv Oblast
As many as twenty three athletes competed in the 86 kg class.

Our debutant took last place. It seems that his time has not come yet. But, in my opinion, since he’s training together with Rustam it’s worth paying attention to his performance in future. Where does this quite tall and strongly built athlete come from? Why wasn’t he nervous despite the presence of many champions? He is a champion and medalist of Russian and Ukrainian competitions in the discipline, which is not popular in our country. I mean cross-country skiing, precisely its summer equivalent- roller skiing.

Michailo practised the sport for many years, yet injuries prevented him from continuing his career. He decided to take up armwrestling.

After a brief conversation with the student and his master I wrote in my notebook “Michailo Sarapulov - check the results of this athlete in future”.

Distance comparison

Dear athlete from Poland! When you’ll be complaining about getting from Gdynia to Orawa – the distance is 672 km - compare two routes. The Crimea - Lviv - one thousand two hundred kilometers. This distance was covered by a group of four nice guys by train. I met them after verification and weigh-ins beside the Millennium club at the Lion Cup.

The team from the Crimea travelled by train.

They came to Lviv to win! How did it go?
Haiser Ibryshev kept to his plan and took first place on the left and on the right hand beating 14 athletes in the 63 kg class.

Sergey Tchindiasov was third on the left and eighth on the right in the 95 kg class.

Only Rasim Memet from the Crimean four decided to compete in the “plus” class and came in third on the left and fourth on the right hand. He also competed in the “open” class taking third place with the right arm, which should be considered a success taking into account that he was beaten by Andrey and “Sem”.

The fourth of this nice group - Suleysan Fettayev competed in the 78 kg category and, unfortunately, was last on both days.

Whenever I meet such athletes, I always ask them what they do beside armwrestling. The “Crimean” group included a student, an air force soldier, a contractor and a teacher. It’s easy to guess who is who and what he does looking at the photo.

Best regards to the team from the Crimea! See you at the next competition!

Little surprise

Several athletes exceeded their weight limits and had to get rid of extra weight at a given time. As a result, one of them would run with headphones in his ears. For sure, he was listening to the soundtrack from Rocky.

Another competitor applied a method called “two in one”, that is he combined losing weight with hair removal. Actually it was a “three in one” method. I was looking scornfully at him for I was glad that when I practiced sport the socialist system would prohibit such practices (well, actually we lacked suitable products). Why is the method called “three in one”? It’s easy!
You keep running with your legs wrapped in foil stuck with a plaster. As a result:
One – you reduce weight;
Two – you remove your hair;
Three – you’re pissed off before the match (because it hurts!)
 

We go to you, you come to us
As  the organizers of Lion Cup and Igor Mazurenko agreed, it is urgent to set the dates for the competitions in Lviv and in Orawa so that:
Jakub Janczy would be able to invite athletes from Lviv and all Ukraine to Orawa,
the organizers of Lion Cup could invite Poles to Lviv. The distance Lviv - Orawa is about 400 km.
We’ll continue this topic.
PeSzy