The beach wrestlers of the “Neftchi” Sports Club finished the European Championship among juniors held in the Croatian city of Porec with 2 gold and 1 bronze medals.
In group B, Rashid Nazarov (60 kg) defeated Croatian wrestlers Nikola Duric and Lovro Vidovic, as well as Ukrainian Ilya Klimchuk with a score of 3:0. Nazarov, who reached the semifinals as the group leader, lost to Georgian Rati Beridze in the last seconds of the final – 2:3. Rashid faced Klimchuk again in the match for the bronze medal. This time, Rashid Nazarov, who did not give his opponent a point (3:0), took the third step of the podium.
Ruslan Valiyev (70 kg) defeated Greek Yannis Apostol and Ukrainian Ivan Zalisko with a score of 3:0 in group A. Since Croatian Leon Kuzman did not wrestle, our wrestler also scored a technical victory. He qualified for the semifinals as the group leader. Our representative faced his teammate Aykhan Guliyev in the semifinals. Our athlete also emerged victorious from this fight – 4:1. Ruslan Valiyev defeated another Georgian representative, Luka Makharadze, 3:0 in the decisive match and became the European champion. Nihad Suleymanli (80 kg) qualified for Group A by defeating British Marshall Everett 3:0 in his debut. He defeated Georgian Nuradin Mustafayev 3:1 in the group stage, and Greek Panayotis Kiparissopoulos and Hungarian Norbert Tapodi 3:0 in the group stage to advance to the semifinals as the group leader. Nihad Suleymanli did not give Georgian Zebur Abashidze any chance at this stage – 3:0. Our wrestler faced Nuradin Mustafayev again in the final and did not allow his opponent to take revenge. Nihad Suleymanli, who was happy with the 4:1 victory, won the gold medal.