The Junior World Wrestling Championship was held in Sofia, Bulgaria from 13-18 August with the participation of 47 countries including Egypt. The remaining were Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Honduras, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States, Uzbekistan and the host country. In the Greco-Roman 84 category, Russian wrestler Sosruko Kodzokov snatched a gold medal, Iranian Yousef Ghaderian took silver and Egyptian Tarek Abdel-Salam won a bronze after beating Korean wrestler Jun-Hyeong Choi with a shoulder touch. Abdel-Salam was chosen the best technical performance in the championship. Managing director of the national teams at the Egyptian Wrestling Federation (EWF) Hossam Abdel-Latif told Al-Ahram Weekly, “This championship is considered one of the world's biggest wrestling events”. In order to qualify a wrestler must win gold medals in the African championships. Egypt participated with two wrestlers in Greco-Roman, Abdel-Salam 84kg, and Adham Saleh 66kg, and two wrestlers in freestyle, Hossam Mustafa 84kg and Amr Al-Sayed 96kg. “The Egyptian team spent a whole month in training at the Olympic Centre in Maadi, 25 days in a training camp in Hungary and 20 days in a training camp in Azerbaijan,” Abdel-Latif said. Abdel-Salam has been wrestling for 11 years with his coach Kamal Abdu at the Olympic Centre. He always won gold medals in national championships. He went to a training camp in Bulgaria and also won a bronze medal in the Mediterranean Games 2013. Now, he is preparing himself for the Senior World Championship in Hungary from 16-22 September. Egyptian wrestler Hossam Mustafa, in the freestyle 84kg category was unlucky. In round 16, Mustafa beat Ukraine's wrestler Ruslan Rychko 7-0. But then, Mustafa said, “I got injured in my right knee before the end of my first match. I was totally confused whether to continue or not. I challenged myself. I decided to continue but I failed to win due to my injury.” In the semi-final, Mustafa was defeated by Israeli wrestler Ophir Bernstein 2-7, finishing in fifth position. “I believe I won the match,” Mustafa said. “I believe this is unfair and biased towards Israeli wrestlers. I found the referees committee biased towards the Israeli wrestler Bernstein. I scored two points and Bernstein took three points because I was playing with an injury. In the last point, Bernstein tried to push me out of the zone to score a point. The referee calculated the last move at three points instead of one.” Mustafa said, “After the match I went to the doctor. He said I have a cut in the cartilage of my right knee and that I need an operation.” Mustafa has been wrestling for 12 years. In his latest achievements he snatched two gold medals in the freestyle 84kg category and Greco-roman 96kg at the African Championship in Chad from 2-7 May this year. Abdel-Latif added, “There is no injustice. The jury panel in the world championship is always at the highest level of arbitration. I found there was nothing unfair about Hossam's result.” The Russian wrestler Vladisalv Valiev won a gold medal after he defeated Bernstein 11-4 in the final. German Wladimir Remel took a silver medal after defeating Mustafa 8-1 in the final.
