I and Sigita met in Manchester Worlds in 2006 , 1,5 year later fell in love and got married.

She was a bronze medalist junior armwrestler then.

After we got married we had our son Emir and Sigita had to stop competing for some years. After a point i started to train her again and finally in 2014 she competed the Turkish Nationals with 1 year training and won 1. place with both right and left hands. At the Europeans in Baku she has taken 4. place with both hands and missed the medal. At the Worlds in Lithuania she won the bronze with left arm after the legendary Ukranian puller Illushina and the Russian.

This year at the Turkish Nationals she had some tough times but she still managed to win 2 gold medals once again. Till the Europeans in Bulgaria she had 3 international medals (2 junior and 1 senior bronze) and all 3 medals were with left hand.

So she had high hopes in left hand about winning medal but the things with left hand did not go as she expected and she placed far from being a medalist.

That day she decided to quit armwrestling but i encouraged her to go and fight with right arm. We never knew what the future was going to bring for us. I told her that she need to go and fight with her best without caring about the result.

The next day the draw was better than the day before, she beat Russian and the Belarussian without problems. The next opponent was going to be the winner of the Russian and Legendary Illushina. But it was very hard for Sigita to beat either of these two very tough girls. Then something unexpected happenned and these two ladies pulled one of the longest ever fights. It was about 6 minutes match and finally Illushina won but she was dead tired.

Sigita was able to beat her and she guaranteed the silver medal by winning that match. We were expecting Illushina to be still very tired at the semi final match against the Bulgarian, we even expected Bulgarian to beat Illushina but Illushina just flashed the Bulgarian puller. Then we realised that Illushina was recovered enough to fight for the gold medal after 3-4 hours break time that she rested.

In the final match we knew that Illushina had the explosiveness but if the match would stop somewhere then it was going to be an endurance game and this would finish the gas that Illushina had in the tank as she already was tired from the qualification matches.

I told Sigita to not to lose her wrist because she never even trained to armwrestle with the dead wrist. They went to the strap and in the strap Illushina brought Sigita to losing position where Sigita lost her wrist but had the pronator control.

She looked like she was able to wait there but suddenly she just let it go and lost. I was not sure if she could not hold there any longer or she let it go. She told me that she let it go to save herself for the re-final match but it was a mistake because she had to tire her opponent as much as possible to finish the energy that Illushina saved after the war that she had against the Russian.

They went there for the last battle and they again went to strap. I saw that Sigita had a very low grip and from one side it was a wrong desicion as she had to use her pronator against the tired hand of Illushina because Illushina and the Russian had a toproll battle and her hand must had been very tired after such battle. Illushina hit from outside and took Sigita’s wrist.

I was hoping Sigita to remember what i told her about doing her best without caring about the result. I did not want her to regret later for not doing her best. Illushina had all the advantage but she was not able to finish the match. Sigita lost her pronator but because of holding low she was able to apply pressure against Illushina’s arm even though her wrist was toprolled. More Illushina hit and failed stronger the faith of Sigita became. As i expected the longer the match went quicker the endurance of Illushina ended. Sigita got the support from her winning side of the leg of the table by locking her feet and she then became able of apply offensive pressure and finally won the match.

Of course this was a great success and unforgettable memory for her but she even today admits that Illushina is the best puller in that category and the Russian girl is the second best.

She believes that she deserved 3. place but in a competetion it is very hard to know how the things are going to end up. The day before she was planning to quit armwrestling and now she was the European Champion!

Right now she is training for the worlds in Malaysia by knowing that she will not be as lucky as she was in Bulgaria. She is targeting a medal though.

Engin Terzi