WRESTLING – BAHRAIN’S world and Olympic champion Akhmed Tazhudinov is set to spearhead the kingdom’s senior men’s wrestling national team as he makes his long-awaited return from injury in the Grand Prix of Spain.
The United World Wrestling (UWW) event is taking place in the city of Madrid this weekend and it features competitions across various weight categories in freestyle, Greco-Roman, and women’s wrestling. It is one of the major meetings leading up to this year’s UWW Senior World Championships, set to take place in Zagreb, Croatia, this September.
Tazhudinov will be contesting the men’s 97kg division. The Paris 2024 Olympics gold-medallist and wrestling superstar is part of a six-member Bahraini team in the event’s freestyle wrestling programme. The others are Alibeg Alibegov in the men’s 65kg category, Magomedrasul Asluev in the men’s 74kg, Khidir Saipudinov in the men’s 79kg, Magomed Sharipov in the men’s 92kg, and Shamil Sharipov in the men’s 125kg division.
All the freestyle wrestling competitions are scheduled to take place tomorrow.
The kingdom’s wrestlers travelled to Madrid with a delegation that is headed by Bahrain Wrestling Federation (BWF) vice-president Kamal Jamal Kamal and includes legendary wrestling coach Shamil Omarov.
The wrestlers geared up for their participation in Spain with a training camp in Russia, supervised and attended by BWF president Abdulredha Haji.
Tazhudinov’s participation in Spain will be his first competitive appearance on the mat since recovering from a shoulder injury which he suffered last year at the Olympics, Haji confirmed with the GDN.
Tazhudinov was supposed to compete in the UWW Senior Men’s Asian Championships 2025 in Amman, Jordan, last March, but eventually decided to skip the meeting as he was not yet fully ready then. Tazhudinov’s injury ended his historic 2024 as he underwent surgery and had been rehabilitating since.
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