Following foreign stars’ websites I often think that sportsmen from other countries are much more active than ours (from former Eastern Bloc). You hardly hear anything about our sportsmen between tournaments, unless you find some sporadic article on some website. It is very rare to see contestants promoted, workshops or open training sessions organized. If anything like that takes place, it’s not widely promoted among fans, the thing that is visible is only advertisement.

In USA open sparrings with technique training are called “practices”. They are traditional happenings, gatherings of not only the sportsmen, but also fans. It’s enough for Larratt to write on Facebook that a practice will take place, and he can be sure of a crowd of onlookers. We, on the other hand, cannot boast similar activity of our sportsmen.

Recently Artem Taranenko, a peasant born and raised in Russia, presently living in USA, became a member of a “practice”.

My friend decided to organize a friendly fight, just like they do in football, team against team – says Artem. – When he wrote about it on Facebook, many people responded instantly, there were even requests for a broadcast. As a result, the event was watched by over 20 people. Among them was the famous Chris Chandler. After the fight he gave individual lessons to his opponents, because in America there are almost no professional clubs, most armwrestlers are self-taught.

In Europe the sportsmen are not as active as their counterparts across the ocean. Why is that? Is that how a sportsman should behave? There’s no simple answer to those questions. We can, however, look at it “from inside out”. Here to help us is Artem Taranenko, who has experienced “ours” and “theirs” armwrestling first-hand.

Europeans see training differently – says Artem. You can’t call it idleness, it’s a matter of mentality. I’d like to say that the American way of practice is more modern and effective in promoting armwrestling. Social media articles, photos and reports, on-line broadcasts – they are available to everyone, but not everyone knows how to use them. In Russia we don’t see training as a way to promote armwrestling in general, so the sportsmen don’t get proactive outside of a gym.

So, what should happen to make our contestants more modern? Do they need to at all? I think time will tell, we need to see how the progress goes abroad and what will our response be.

Аrtur Grigorian © Gra