Turkish Nationals this year hosted +1.000 competitors from 65 cities. Since Niyazi Kurt (who is a former WAF& European Champion) became the president Armwrestling became more popular and our nationals became tougher with the youth competitors growing year by year. Burak Gunaydın who won U21 55kg left hand class and Oguzhan Kocak who won U21 80kg right hand class also won the senior classes. Sultan Sivrihisarlı who won U18 70kg class right & left, and Umran Keser who won U21 55kg class right & left won the senior classes right & left as well. U18 category puller Emre Albas decided to pull juniors with right hand he won while he pulled seniors only with his left hand and won that class as well.
50kg senior women class dominated by 2015 EAC champion Esra Kiraz, 60kg senior women class dominated by Arzu Kuslar. Arif Ertem the bronze medalist of 2015 EAC won the superheavyweight class. 110kg class was a tough one and Hasan Ali Say won with left hand while Engin Erdogan (bronze medalist of 2015 WAF) won with right hand.
100kg category was also a tough one, with left hand Sahip Caglar won the class while Tuncay Basaran won the right hand category over another WAF champion Ozgur Kizgin after an exciting final match.
90kg class had many tough pullers and last year’s winner Yakup Duran this year again won the competetion with right hand while Akın Turker won the class with left hand.
In 85kg another future star of armwrestling Hamza Ziypak took 2. place to Vedat Bozbey. Hamza won the U21 class right & left hand easily and also took 3. place in senior left hand class. Ayhan Bayazit won the left hand senior class over Vedat Bozbey.
In 80kg class Oguzhan Kocak dominated the class with right hand while Rahman Kaya won with left hand. Oguzhan is only 20 years old and last year he took bronze both in EAC and WAF senior right hand 80kg. This year Zoloev moved up to heavier class and Turkish team expects a senior gold from Oguzhan.
75kg class was held with the absence of Mirza Bilal who has World and European titles in youth categories. Emrah Okcu won the class with right hand Azmi Semercioglu won with left hand.
70kg class once again had myself and Serhat Arslan. We shared the arms as we have been doing in last 3 years.
65kg class’ righ hand winner was Eren Aggül who came back after a long absence while Tolga Sener won the class with left hand.
As i mentioned above Emre Albas won 60kg senior left hand class while Ismail Turker won with right hand.
In 55kg Zafer Noyan won the class with right hand while Burak Gunaydın won the left hand class.
Team Turkey is planning to come to the Europeans with about 100 competitors and targeting top 3 in team competetion.
Hope to see the armwrestling family in Romania!