02 August 2012, 23:00
Azerbaijani athletes complete their performance in judo at London Olympics
The sixth day of the London Olympic Games proved to be unsuccessful for Azerbaijani athletes. On August 2, Azerbaijan has finally lost its chances to win medals at competitions in judo: Elmar Gasymov, the last Azerbaijani athlete had to occupy the seventh place.
In 1/16 and 1/8 finals, Elmar Gasymov (100 kg) with identical scores of 1:0 defeated Maxim Rakov, representative of Kazakhstan, and Levan Zhorzholiani, representative of Georgia.
In the quarterfinals, Elmar Gasymov was defeated by Hee De Hwang of Korea. Nevertheless, he had a chance to compete for the bronze medal: to take it, he had to win in the consolation fight. However, in that fight, the Azerbaijani judoka prematurely lost to Ramziddin Saidov, the representative of Uzbekistan, and ended up at the seventh place.
Seven more Azerbaijani judoka, including Elnur Mamedli, Champion of the Beijing Olympic Games, left the competitions earlier, also without medals.
Agayar Akhundzade, Chief Coach of the Azerbaijani judo team, found it difficult to uniquely name the reasons for unsuccessful performance of his athletes. According to him, the team has completed the entire selected programme to prepare for the Olympic Games.
Author: Faik Medzhid Source: CK correspondent