Translated material
Despite the elements
The strong half of our team, led by Ezio Gamba, spent the last training camp before the European Championships not far from London, at the British Judo Institute in Dartford, and the beautiful half, together with Anatoly Rakhlin, prepared for the championship at the base in Adler, Russia. Since the prospects for flights remained vague even on April 19, the leadership of the Russian Judo Federation decided to send teams by ground transport. The men traveled by train under the English Channel to Belgium, and from there to the capital of Austria. The women had to fly to Moscow and prepare for a bus ride through Brest to Vienna (about 2000 km). However, at the last moment, an opportunity was found to send the athletes by plane along a dedicated corridor, and the team flew safely from Vnukovo.
The raging Eyjafjallajökull disrupted many people's plans. It was assumed that at the European Championships in Vienna, which, due to its “non-Olympic” rating status, was not supposed to gather all the strongest (the race for points for qualifying for London 2012 starts with the May Grand Prix in Tunisia), out of the declared 300 athletes, representing 45 countries, significantly fewer judokas will appear on the tatami of the Vienna Ferry-Dusika-Stadion. However, we should not forget that the European Championship is an official tournament, the medals of which are always highly valued. In addition, this time, for the first time in recent years, the organizers combined two important continental tournaments, individual and team, thereby giving athletes the opportunity to try to climb onto the European Championship podium twice. So no one should hope for an easy victory.
The Russian team in Austria will be represented in all 14 weight categories (seven for men and women) in the individual tournament and by both teams in the wall-to-wall tournament. As part of the men's team, Russian champions Sirazhudin Magomedov (81 kg) and Askhab Kostoev (100), winner of the European Junior Championship Batradz Kaytmazov (73), winner of the continental youth championship Musa Mogushkov (66) and Universiade winner Dmitry Gerasimenko will compete for “personal” awards (90).
The leaders of the national team are also going to Austria. They will strengthen the team in Sunday's team tournament. The 2009 European champions Arsen Galstyan (66) and Tagir Khaibulaev (+90), the European championship medalist Alim Gadanov (66), the World Championship bronze medalist Mansur Isaev (73), the European and world champion, the best athlete of the Old World according to the results, will take to the tatami 2009 Ivan Nifontov (81), world vice-champion Kirill Denisov (90) and bronze medalist of the 2009 Universiade Dmitry Sterkhov (+90).
In the beautiful half of the Russian team in Vienna you can see the 2009 European champion Natalya Kuzyutina (52 kg) and the continental vice-champion Vera Koval (63), national champions Lyudmila Bogdanova (48), Yulia Ryzhova (57), Olesya Ovseychuk (70) and Flora Mkhitaryan (78), as well as the most titled Russian judoka, bronze medalist of the Athens Games, absolute European champion Thea Donguzashvili.
In team wrestling they will be joined by the country's vice-champions Natalia Kondratyeva and Anna Grebennikova (52), the winners of the European Youth Championship Anna Kharitonova (52) and Marta Labazina (63) and the European vice-champion among athletes under 23 Margarita Gurtsieva (78).