Neutral gold: our fencers and judoka conquer Europe and the world

Major tournaments in sports are taking place in Europe this week, where access to big awards has been difficult for us for several years due to sanctions and the draconian conditions for obtaining neutral status. Now the international federations, although not completely, have made it easier for Russian athletes to participate, which has opened the way for us to medals. And this brought triumphant results at the European Fencing Championships in Genoa, Italy, and the World Judo Championships in Budapest.

Murtazayeva's Golden Injection

The gold of Russian skewer skewer Aizanat Murtazayeva in the individual tournament at the European Championships in Genoa became the first award of the highest standard for our fencing at the continental level since 2019. The pandemic and sanctions have been in the way for six years, and now a 23-year-old native of Dagestan has taken revenge for an insulting fourth place at the Tokyo Games. Four years ago, our athlete lost the Olympic bronze to Estonian Katrina Lechis, and now she has snatched victory from this opponent in the final of the 2025 World Cup. Aizanat led the score throughout the meeting, but in the last seconds of the main time, the Estonian regained the balance — 8:8. And only in the extra minute did the Russian champion manage to deliver the winning shot. What's nice is that Lechis did not arrange political demarches and took a photo together on the podium.

"I don't believe it happened yet," Murtazayeva shared her emotions in an interview with the official FIE channel. — There was no focus on winning, I was just trying to show good fencing, do everything I can. I knew that I could win, but I tried not to think about it, because such thoughts often get in my way. I didn't feel very good in the group stage, but I got involved during the competition. The long pauses between fights helped. During them, I tried not to think about fencing — I lay down, watched social media, tried to go to each fight as if it were the first one of the day, I started everything from scratch. I knew that with my height, it would be difficult for me in the final against a tall opponent, so the last injection is fantastic.

Murtazayeva became only the third Russian woman to win the title of the continent's best skewer. In 2003, Tatiana Logunova did this, and then Violetta Kolobova became the European champion twice, taking gold in 2015 and 2017. It was from Kolobova in 2022 that Aizanat took over the leadership in this type of weapon in the domestic arena. Murtazayeva has been dominating all Russian tournaments for three years now, so her current victory is more than deserved. Alas, this is the only award of neutral Russians in the individual tournament in Genoa. The rest of our country's representatives did not even make it to the semifinals. But in fairness, it must be said that due to restrictions on the admission of representatives of CSKA and Dynamo, such stars as Yana Egoryan, Sofia Velikaya, Olga Nikitina, Timur Safin and Kamil Ibragimov could not go to Italy.

However, Murtazayeva's medal in Genoa is not the only one for us. For the first time since 2022, our national teams were allowed to participate in team tournaments. This decision was an important moment on the way to easing sanctions and required a lot of courage from the international federation. After all, the pressure of the Ukrainian lobby in this sport is still very serious.

On the first day of the team tournaments, the sabre players were immediately pleased. In the match for the third place, Russians Pavel Graudyn, Anatoly Kostenko, Dmitry Danilenko and Kirill Tyulyukov snatched bronze from the French national team with a score of 45:42. The European Championship in Genoa will end on June 19.

Arbuzov's winning throw

In judo, the situation with the admission of Russians to big tournaments is simpler, although there is an extremely unpleasant experience of Paris-2024, where our national team did not go in full force in protest because of unfair suspensions. But at the current 2025 World Cup in Hungary, we have a strong team, as Timur Arbuzov proved, who became the best in the weight category up to 81 kg. A year ago, a 21-year-old native of Krasnodar Krai was also in the final of the World Championships, but lost to the future Paris 2024 silver medalist Tato Grigalashvili from Georgia. Now our athlete has taken unconditional revenge by defeating the Georgian in the two main matches of the season: in the final of the European Championship in Podgorica and now in the golden duel in Budapest.

— Most of the time passed without ratings, and in Golden Score the match was interrupted several times due to a cut from a Georgian judoka, - the official website of the Russian Judo Federation tells about the final of the 2025 World Cup. — It seemed that last year's fight pattern was repeating itself, constantly knocking Arbuzov off the rhythm of the fight with multiple pauses for bandages, but not this time — the Russian patiently waited for the moment and in the eighth minute of the confrontation, with a twisting throw "uki otoshi" took the first "world gold" in his career.

"This time, the pauses turned out to be 100% in my favor,— Arbuzov quotes judo.ru — I started to get tired, and he went to the doctors — in 30 seconds I had time to recover and recharge for two or three more attacks. I don't remember how I made the decisive throw: the body played itself, there was no plan for it. I don't realize yet that I've become a champion, but I'm happy. I didn't want to give up the finals for the second year in a row: for a whole year I thought about gold, did everything the coaches said, even worked on an injury and believed that the work would pay off. Now it's important not to slow down: the opponents will tune in to me differently.

In the weight category up to 100 kg, Matvey Kanikovsky was stronger in the final than Japanese Dota Arai. On the way to the golden bout, he defeated another representative of Russia, the 2023 world champion Arman Adamyan, who eventually won the bronze. For 23-year-old Matvey, this is the first triumph at this level. He has previously won the European Championship and Grand Slam tournaments. Ayub Bliev also won the bronze medal in the category up to 60 kg.

At the World Championships in Budapest, there will also be men's and women's heavyweight competitions, as well as a team tournament, which our judoists were allowed to enter only this year. Since 2023, representatives of Russia have been competing in neutral status in almost the strongest teams, if we do not take into account the incident with admission to the 2024 Olympics.