“January Camp” for American Greco-Roman athletes is beginning to wind down following what was a weekend of rest. Today (January 16) had been intended to provide a strong close-out for attendees in the form of afternoon “grind matches”.
Grind matches have not been deployed often in recent years, though they were once a traditional modality for the US program. Taking place for anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes and usually with wrestlers keeping the same partners through the entirety, grind matches are purposed to test conditioning as well as build confidence. This year’s iteration is scheduled for four 15-minute rounds with different partners rotating in on one wrestler each round.
Monday’s morning session was originally to offer “shark bait” style drilling, which one might suppose such a configuration was chosen to act as a primer for the afternoon’s more intensive protocol. While that may have transpired, reportedly what also occurred is that the Greco-Roman athletes worked with freestyle wrestlers on gutwrench defense.
Tomorrow (Tuesday, January 17) is the final day of “January Camp 2023” and will include additional par terre work along with coach assessments of today’s “grind matches”.
Bulgarian Championships
The 2023 Bulgarian Wrestling Championships came and went over the weekend in Sliven. As reported last week, two-time U23 World Champion and former Ukrainian competitor Semyon Novikov has reached full eligibility to represent BUL internationally, and in Sliven he made his in-country debut by winning the 87-kg category. In the bracket final, Novikov defeated Ioan Dimitrov via criteria 1-1.
- Abu-Muslim Amaev (63 kg), likewise featured last week due to his own citizenship breakthrough, won his second-straight Bulgarian title and did not surrender a single point to any of his three foes. Amaev went on to trounce Kristian Bakhchevanov in the gold round and was later named the event’s “Most Technical Wrestler”.
- Others earning tournament victories included two-time World silver Kiril Milov (97 kg), Aik Mnatsakanian (77 kg), Stefan Georgiev (55 kg), Ivo Iliev (67 kg), Rosian Dermanski (82 kg), and Mariyan Marinov (130 kg).
- The youngest of the Nazaryan family, Grisha Nazaryan, made his Senior debut in Sliven and finished in third place. Nazaryan advanced to the semifinals at 60 kg where he was downed by Nedyalko Petrov.
SWE Roster for CRO
The Swedish Wrestling Federation have released their lineup for the upcoming multinational training camp that is to follow the Grand Prix Zagreb Open next month. Camp, which runs from February 5 to 12, will be hosted in Porec. It is expected that the camp roster will mirror SWE’s entries for Zagreb.
60 kg: Ardit Fazljija
63 kg: Alexander Bica
67 kg: Niklas Ohlen
77 kg: Albin Olofsson
77 kg: Lukas Ahlgren
82 kg: Alex Kessidis — ’19 World silver
87 kg: Zakarias Berg
87 kg: Aleksanar Stjepanetic
97 kg: Oskar Johansson
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