Russia has returned the champions – Kommersant

Last weekend, Russia received its first world champions in Olympic sports after the introduction in 2022 of its absolute sports isolation, with reservations canceled in the spring. They were brought to her by judoist Arman Adamyan, who won the gold of the world championships in Doha and Tashkent, as well as boxers Sharabutdin Ataev and Muslim Gadzhimagomedov.

Circumstances turned the gold medal won in Doha by 26-year-old heavyweight (up to 100 kg) Arman Adamyan into an event not only noticeable, but very, very special for Russia. In fact, this was the first significant champion title she won in the Olympic form since last spring she found herself in almost complete international sports isolation, and her representatives were deprived of the opportunity to participate in top competitions. The road to this gold was opened for Adamyan by the International Judo Federation (IJF), which showed amazing promptness, immediately after the appearance in March of new, softened recommendations of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), sanctioning the admission of Russians and Belarusians to their tournaments and immediately inviting them to the world championship, and also an amazing benevolence towards athletes from these countries. Unlike, for example, the International Fencing Federation (FIE), it did not begin to sift the Russian application through a fine filter, throwing out of it all athletes who did not meet the IOC criteria, but allowed to speak in Doha, most of the leaders did not give a damn about the fact that some names are easy to find on the website of the CSKA sports society, and the protests of individual delegations, in vain trying to remind the ban on any connection with the armed forces of the Russian Federation.

However, Adamyan’s victory in “peaceful” time would have been an extraordinary event, given the style in which it was won.

On the way to it, the champion of the 2019 European Games confidently prevailed in all fights, having dealt with the world-leading Georgian Ilya Sulamanidze, among other things, and in the final he defeated the real legend of judo – two-time Olympic champion Czech Lukas Krpalek. During the fight, Krpalek gave the impression of a person who, in principle, does not understand how to approach his opponent, and is only able to run away from him.

In terms of resonance, perhaps, Arman Adamyan could slightly surpass heavyweight Inal Tasoev. He reached the final of the competition in his category, meeting in it with a judoka, against the background of whose track record even Krpalek’s huge set of awards looks modest. Frenchman Teddy Riner, with his three Olympic gold medals and a stack of other valuable prizes, has about the same status in judo as Lionel Messi in football: at least in this century, he is the undisputed king of his species. And 25-year-old Tasoev was close to stripping the king of his ninth world title. His fight with Riner taxied to overtime, in which the Russian performed something terribly similar to a trick. Everything in that episode depended on the interpretation of the judges, and they considered that there was no reception. And soon it was held by Teddy Riner.

In a different situation, both of these performances – and adding Inal Tasoev, who will soon, apparently, even better deal with the nuances of the Frenchman’s technique, and even more so Arman Adamyan – would be doomed to arouse the temptation to state that Russia has at least two clear favorites in judo for the future Olympics to be held in Paris in the summer of 2024. But now one must be extremely careful with such statements, because the trip of the Russian delegation to the Olympic Games itself is still in question. The IOC, at best, will make a decision about it closer to the middle of summer.

With the World Boxing Championship, the story came out both clearer and more dramatic than with the World Judo Championship. Long ago entered into a tough confrontation with the IOC The International Boxing Association (IBA), which is led by the domestic functionary Umar Kremlev, returned the Russians and Belarusians to their tournaments in the fall of 2022 and is not satisfied with any “filtering”. The dramatic shade of the return was given by the reaction of part of the boxing community. Indignant against him, the Tashkent championship was boycotted by more than a dozen and a half countries, including countries that play prominent roles in amateur boxing – the USA and Great Britain.

In their absence, the Russian team showed a slightly better result than at the previous pre-sanction championship in 2021 in Belgrade. Then she collected a total of five medals, now – six. In Belgrade, three Russian boxers broke through to the final fights, in Tashkent – only two (but you need to know that the loss in the semifinals of Dmitry Dvali to the boxer from the host country of the tournament Oybek Zhuraev looked rather strange from the side, since the lion’s share of the Dvali fight was far more accurate and aggressive). But both took gold.

What went to 23-year-old Sharaputdin Ataev (up to 86 kg) definitely cannot be considered “devalued” due to the collective boycott. In the final, he fought with the frontman of the category, the winner of the Belgrade championship, Lorne Alfonso Dominguez, a boxer who once changed his Cuban citizenship to Azerbaijani. And in this duel, Ataev struck first of all with his prudence. It’s rare to see a fairly young boxer fighting in a final match with such a cool head.

In Sharaputdin Ataev’s boxing, it was not difficult to see the pluses of the professional experience that the Russian already has. If the Cuban stubbornly believed in single blows, then Ataev most often worked with prickly series. And his opponent, demonstrating a good defense, still constantly ran into trouble. The success of the Russian was unexpectedly convincing.

The final of the 26-year-old heavyweight (up to 92 kg) Muslim Gadzhimagomedov was completely different.

Gadzhimagomedov, faced with a terribly dodgy and fast Italian Aziz Abbes Mukhidin, did not look closely and adapt to his opponent, but went into the wheelhouse.

He hit and missed, hit and missed … It was a difficult fight for both the boxers and the judges, who obviously had to suffer after each of the three rounds, choosing who to give the advantage. But when it ended, the referee nevertheless raised Gadzhimagomedov’s hand, whose Olympic prospects, like Ataev’s, should be treated even more carefully than the prospects of judokas. The World Championship did not even have the rank of a qualifying tournament for the Olympics, and the IOC regularly hints that it may completely exclude boxing from the Paris program if the IBA does not offer a way out of what the main sports structure takes for a crisis that suits it.

Alexey Dospekhov