There are no doubts, World Championship is an important experience in every sportsman’s life. And it is good that South-East Asian countries start to join to this experience.

– This time Malaysian team has not so much sportsmen, but their results were not so bad…

– Sportsmen level this year is totally different from last year at all. People like Zair Akhmedov can’t even retain his title anymore. As for my team – my puller only took 7th in junior and 10th in senior 55kg. But it was a great experience with lots of powerful opponent. Honestly in junior 55 we aim to get gold medal. The guy prepared very well and I have done some "test" with the 55kg world candidate. However luck was not on our side But still our aim is gold for next year WAC.

Next year in Budapest we might see new faces from Asia, as I am helping few countries with their visa.

It was great experience in Blagoevgrad, nice organization, cheap food and taxi, all was good.

I can see the level of refereeing this year is very high. Part of it was because Leonard Harkless put 7 master candidates under test hence everyone was doing their best to avoid mistake.

How do you think, what is the most difficult in referee's job?

– Well, to handle aggressive puller, who don’t speak English is a real problem. It’s hard to give instructions to them with words alone. It require proper signal to ensure no pullers lost due to bad rule interpretation. Also in my opinion, lots of puller still doesn’t understand the rule fully. Some don’t understand foul in referee grip and some can’t accept the lost in losing position.

Country team captain or coach should play the role to educate the armwrestlers about the rules to avoid unnecessary foul or loss. It is unfortunate to lost because of silly mistake and not due to armwrestling.

And now you have good knowlege. Will you share it with other people?

– Yes, of course. I will start with South-East Asia. As a matter of fact I always travel to South-East Asia countries to train new referee as national country level.

We are very glad that armwrestling team is getting bigger, so we wish Zil and his team to develop and to bring new stars in our sport!