From 24th to 27th of January, in the Palace of Sports (Olimpiyskaya Embankment, 3) in Ekaterinburg, the Russian National Junior Championship will be held among young men and women of 17-18 years old. The winners will receive the right to participate in the World Junior Championship in Serbia in October, and silver medalists will compete in the European Junior Championship in Bulgaria in April.
It is expected that more than 700 people will participate in the tournament in the Ural capital. Due to such a large number of participants, it was decided to increase the competition program from the traditional three days to four.
The Sverdlovsk Sambo School will be represented at the Russian Junior Championship by a team of more than 30 young men and women. Most of them earned this right by being among the winners at the December Championship of the Ural Federal District, which also took place in Ekaterinburg. In addition, the team of the Sverdlovsk region got the opportunity to make an additional application as the host of the competition.
The majority of athletes on our team are the athletes of the Sambo Club UMMC from Verkhnyaya Pyshma - there are 13 of them. They were preparing for this important tournament at the Granatovaya Buhta sport campus near Verkhnyaya Sysert, where for many years Sverdlovsk sambo wrestlers were preparing for their most important competitions.
According to the head coach of the national team of the Sverdlovsk region and the head coach of the Sambo Club UMMC Alexander Melnikov, about 70 people participated in the training camp. We were not afraid to invite future rivals from neighboring regions, for example, the Kurgan region and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.
“This is the optimal amount to most effectively build the training process, organize work in pairs in their weight categories, conduct sparring sessions and so on,” says Alexander Melnikov as he shares his secrets of training.
“Our senior athletes, World and European champions, set the bar so high that we need to give our best for more than one hundred percent so as not to let them and our coaches down, not to damage the honor of the club,” says Alexander Kanatchikov from the Sambo Club UMMC, who intends to repeat his last year’s success and once again hit the first pace of the Junior Championship podium.
P.S. the Russian championship among young men and women opens a great sporting year for Ekaterinburg, the main event of which will be the European Sambo Championship in May.
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