Azerbaijan athlete to be stripped of bronze medal and be banned for 2 years

Azerbaijani sambo fighter Bakhtiyar Abbasov will lose his bronze medal, which he had received during the Sambo World Cup, and be banned from competitions for two years.

The president of the Sambo Federation of Azerbaijan, Jeyhun Mamedov, stated the aforesaid.

“European Sambo Federation President Sergey Eliseev told me about Abbasov’s banning and being stripped of his medal. [But] the final decision will be made soon,” Haqqin.az quoted Mamedov as saying.

As reported earlier, the bronze-medal-winning Azerbaijani athlete had “stood out” by his unsportsmanlike conduct during the Sambo World Cup Anatoly Kharlampiev Memorial Tournament, which was held in the Russian capital city of Moscow.

At the medal ceremony for the 90 kg weight class, Abbasov had crouched while the Armenian national anthem was playing, and in honor of gold medalist Ashot Danielyan, who hails from Nagorno-Karabakh.