2024-08-07 19:52:41
The Ukrainian with a Bulgarian passport, Semen Novikov, won the least silver medal at the Olympics. In the 1/2 finals of the 87 kg category in classical wrestling, he beat the world champion David Losonci (Hungary) 2:1 and will fight for the gold tomorrow. Finally, the Hungarians protested and the result became 3:1 for ours.
In the category, the Iranian Alireza Mohmadiani managed to dethrone the Olympic champion Zhan Beleniuk (Ukraine) after 3:3 in regular time, but was the last to take a point. So he will fight with ours in the final.
Grisha Ganchev, the man who made Novikov fight for Bulgaria, cried in the hall after the victory.
This is the first medal for our men’s wrestling since Beijing 2008, when we took three bronzes through Yavor Yanakiev, Kiril Terziev and Radoslav Velikov.
“We will fight. That’s it,” said the coach of our national team, Farniev.
“This is the third time we have met this wrestler from Hungary. He beat us twice before. We knew what he was doing, where he was doing. Semen was extremely well prepared for this match both physically and tactically. Our head coach Farniev gave him very good tactics for the match Semen kept everything and won. I don’t know which was better for Semen to play with the Ukrainian. In my opinion, they trained together the Iranian, as it turned out. He is not very well known to us, although Semen knows all the wrestlers,” said the assistant coach of our national team, Emil Budinov.
Out of fatalism, Semyon Novikov promised to speak only after a loss. Now everyone is crossing their fingers that he doesn’t say a word after the final.