Medal countdown: how the 2025 World Games will be remembered

Russian athletes won 16 awards at the World Games, which ended in Chengdu, China — five gold, six silver and five bronze. It should be noted that at the 2017 World Games in Wroclaw, our team had 63 awards (28-21-14). Such a huge difference is due to the fact that in Poland we had a large delegation of athletes, while in China the Russians competed in a neutral status in only eight disciplines (36 people) out of 34. Almost half of them leave Chengdu with medals.

Undefeated Sliseva

The World Games are organized by the International World Games Association (IWGA), a non—profit organization recognized and supported by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IWGA consists of 40 international sports federations. Competitions are held once every four years.

In fact, the World Games are an Olympiad in non—Olympic sports and disciplines. The program for 2025 included 34 sports. Some of them will become Olympic in Los Angeles in 2028, for example, flag football (an analogue of American football) or lacrosse. Most of the new Olympic sports went through the school of the World Games. This includes rock climbing and break dancing. Some sports, on the contrary, were once Olympic, but now they have lost their status, like a tug of war. And some of them are still Olympic, it's just that federations compete for medals in non-Olympic disciplines as part of the World Games. Examples are rhythmic gymnastics, trampolining, and canoeing.

The last time the Russian national team participated in the World Games was in 2017, confidently winning the overall standings. In 2022, our team was not allowed in for political reasons.

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The submariners take the medals, the SAMBO wrestlers join the fight, and the Russian athlete in the pool was strangely not allowed into the playoffs.

The return, all things considered, turned out great. Of the 33 Russians who competed for medals (three participated in a demonstration Aikido), 15 people rose to the podium at once.

The main character was swimmer Diana Sliseva, who left the World Games undefeated and with two top-class awards to her credit: 50 m with apnea and 100 m in classical fins. Alexander Kusakin (dynamic freediving without fins) and Alexey Molchanov (freediving with fin apnea) won silver medals in Chengdu. The latter is a true freediving legend. During his career, he has won 34 world titles in this discipline.

"The reception in China was very cool, it's one of the biggest competitions I've participated in,— Molchanov told Izvestia. — There were a huge number of sports, thousands of athletes. And the whole organization, the reception at the airport, in the athletes' village, in the pool — everything was very beautifully organized. I have a lot of experience, the first World Cup was in 2005. I started preparing more in the pool especially for these games, starting around November, since my main specialization is diving into the depths.

Molchanov also expressed the hope that freediving will become an Olympic sport within the next 5-10 years.

The bronze medalists in swimming were Valeria Andreeva (50 m in classical fins), Alexey Fedkin (100 m in classical fins), Ekaterina Mikhailushkina (200 m in classical fins) and Elizaveta Kupressova (400 m in classical fins).

Fights are won by zero

Great hopes were associated with our SAMBO athletes, where Russia was represented by nine elite athletes at once. The most decorated of them, five-time world champion Sheikh-Mansur Khabibulayev, justified the status of the favorite by winning in the category up to 64 kg. Khabibulaev won all his fights in China by zero.

Sofia Istomina (up to 65 kg) also won a medal of the highest dignity. In the golden meeting, Feruza Bobokulova, a representative of Uzbekistan, put up serious resistance to the winner of the World Cup gold, the European champion of last year, but the Russian woman still took the end of the match. Nina Serdyuk also won the women's bronze medal in the category up to 59 kg.

Four more of our compatriots reached the finals at once, but lost the decisive fights. We are talking about Rolan Zinnatov (up to 71 kg), Hovhannes Abgaryan (up to 79 kg), Abusupiyan Alikhanov (up to 88 kg) and Magomed Hasanov (up to 98 kg). The most insulting thing was the defeat of the latter. Magomed won the opening matches with a total score of 20:2, but in the final he lost to the representative of Armenia Arman Avanesyan with a minimal difference (3:2).

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As a result, the Russian national team became the third in the SAMBO medal standings (two gold, four silver, one bronze), passing ahead of Ukraine and Uzbekistan. It should be noted that the Ukrainian SAMBO wrestlers took four finals out of four. Four defeats of the Russians in decisive battles is, given the traditions of our team, rather a sensation with a minus sign.

But the victory of three-time world champion in Thai boxing Konstantin Shakhtarin (category up to 71 kg) was surprising in many ways. The fact is that during the tournament, one of the most decorated representatives of our delegation in China was injured, but this did not prevent him from winning the semifinal and final matches.