From year to year, starting in 1998, the permanent organizers of the tournament, Viktor Zaitsev and Larisa Borovinskaya, are trying to hold their tournament at a decent level, organizing both competition and accommodation, as well as a cultural program for participants and guests. This tournament gives people with a disability a chance to express themselves through sport and the possibility of companionship with each other, to find new friends from different parts of our country and the near abroad.

This year the Golden Hare tournament was held in the Kapotnya recreation center and gathered a large number of participants. In total, over 150 athletes from 20 regions of Russia and 4 CIS countries: Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus took part in the Golden Hare jubilee tournament. The most representative team was from Tajikistan led by the captain of the team world champion Akmal Kodirov.

Traditionally, a large friendly team represented the Perm region, Moscow and Rostov regions, the republic of SAHA (Yakutia) and the city of Belgorod.

This year's jubilee tournament was attended by the guest of honor, the President of the Polish Federation of Para-Armwrestling and the organizer of the Disabled Armwrestling World Cup Anna Mazurenko. She was very pleased with the warm welcome and shared her thoughts about the tournament, noting that these competitions are the only ones in the world of such a format. Having promised to take all the best of this experience for the implementation in working with people with disabilities in Poland, Anna spoke with great warmth about the atmosphere among people at the tournament.

All this makes this tournament unique in its own way, and it carries a very important function in socialization of the disabled in the first place, and then as event of the sport of the highest achievements.

It is necessary to note the good work of the referees team headed by the referee of the international category, Honored Master of Sports Alina Samotoy.

Despite the fact that the tournament is not a qualifying one, armwrestling stars from both current and past years traditionally attend it.

The overall category was very interesting, in which titled athletes took part: Kodirov Akmal, Yusup Yusupaliev, Vyatkin Sergey, Roman Kruglikov, Grigory Strelnikov and other strong athletes with disabilities, which made the competitions very interesting and entertaining.

By the intensity and passion everyone remembered a prolonged struggle on the left hand between Yusup Yusupaliev and Sergey Vyatkin - despite the fact that Sergey was significantly inferior to Yusup in weight, he was able to fight a heavyweight and win the fight.

The struggle between Vyacheslav Ovsienko from the Moscow Region and Grigory Strelnikov from the Rostov region turned out to be very intense as well. In the result of a tough uncompromising and beautiful struggle Vyacheslav won.

In each weight category, there were both favorites and beginners, who showed a very worthy fight “at all their hardest”. In the overall category among disabled athletes, Kodirov Akmal from Tajikistan was the first on both hands.

Of course, all this would not have been carried out without sponsorship, because the state practically does not provide any assistance to the organizers and everything is on people of goodwill. Special thanks deserves the “Transsoyuz” Charitable Foundation, which has been financing this tournament for 7 years already. The organizers are grateful to LLC City Food Service “Matter of Taste” for providing assistance in catering for participants and guests of the tournament. 

We can only hope that this situation will change one day and the tournament will receive more support from our state as part of the development of social programs to support people with disabilities. In the meantime, we can express gratitude to all the people who have helped the organizers of the tournament for many years.

Let us hope that the Golden Hare tournament will continue to develop, continue to collect disabled athletes and give people a chance, first of all, for socialization through sports and for realization in life, despite their condition, with their great will to win.

Good luck to the Golden Hare!

Roman Sedykh, Multiple world champion