The EC in Baku have shown us that these are the days of famous sportsmen, like Rustam Babayev, Arsen Liliev and many others. There are also many other new fighters entering the podium, jostling for position, in nearly every weight category.

For example: Evgenyi Prudnik fought Babayev before, couldn’t beat him, but this year he’s won gold. The Ukrainian took 4^th in left hand, and 1^st place in right.

Farid Umsanov could fight the Bulgarian – Tsvetkov or the Slovakian Mihaliczka in heavy weight – he had no other opponents. In his opinion, Semerenko and Pushkar were missing in the amateur championships. But this time around Farid came 3^rd, which was a surprise.

We could observe a whole spectrum of different fighters in the lighter categories. Bulgaria was very notable. Sasho Andreev put on some mass and honed his skills, he took 3 golden medals – two in juniors, one in seniors. In the senior category, left arm, the Bulgarians took 9 medals, and only 3 in right arm. Of course, special attention needs to be paid to the Azerbaijan team. They were very good in juniors, seniors and disabled categories. They lacked a bit of power in seniors, but they are a very promising team, as many youths are joining in. In the up to 80kg category we could see Tsvetan Gashevski.

Was that a good comeback – I don’t know. Should we think that he took 3^rd place because he’s strong, or because the category was so weak? Before that, Khadzimurat Zoloyev had the highest position in this category.

Another interesting comeback was Vephiya Samharadze from Georgia. He fought in the 90’s and he’s very experienced. Now he’s in the top three in the up to 75kg category.

There were some interesting fights in the 85kg category. In the past, it was difficult to fight in it, because of the Babayev brothers. Now Eugene Prudnik is the unchallenged leader of the category. Russians always fight at the top level. Instead of Khadzimurat Zoloyev, his brother, Spartak, fought in the up to 90 kg category. Although Tsoriev has been caught using drugs for the second time in his life and has no chance to get back to armwrestling, the competition is still overwhelming. Sergey Tokarev is the leader of the up to 110kg group, he has not many opponents. Lucia Debnarova from Slovakia has had a good few starts recently, winning in the 60kg category for a few years now. Kiraz Ezra is also very impressive in the up to 50kg category.

Thanks to this tournament, we’ve lear ned some new names. Let’s hope to see some of these people in the World Championships in Lithuania.

Anastasia Kisileva