"Although new athletes in my weight are younger than me, I see each of them as competitors. Otherwise, it is difficult to achieve success."
This was said by Sanan Suleymanov, a Greco-Roman wrestler of the Azerbaijan national team, who was a guest of the Idman Bizde program.
He expressed his opinion about the competition in the 77 kg category. Suleymanov admitted that his teammate Khasay Hasanli, who competes in his weight, is promising: "He recently won a gold medal at the U-23 European Championship. The results are obvious. When Khasay was interviewed on your site, we were in a training camp in Croatia. He said that they asked such a question, and I said, "You are right. If we are in the same weight, competition is inevitable. We have to meet anyway."
The wrestler who qualified for Paris-2024 announced the names of his main rivals in the international arena. According to Suleymanov, who is ranked 1st in the world, Nao Kusaka surprises him more: "Armenian and Kyrgyz Akzol Mahmudov, who are in second and third place, also have very good results. Kusaka from Japan surprised me a lot in the last world championship. Had good meetings. Actually, I didn't expect it from him. I met Nao 3 years ago at the U-23 competition. I won 10:0 in 4 minutes. It seems that he worked on himself. But when it comes to the Olympics, there will be 16 athletes in the top race of 4 years. I don't think the weak can get there. For this reason, all of them are serious competitors for me."
It should be noted that along with Suleymanov, Hasrat Jafarov (67 kg) and Magomedkhan Magomedov (97 kg) from our Greco-Roman wrestlers got a chance to participate in Paris-2024.
Emin Aga
Idman.biz
