Azerbaijan athlete is stripped of bronze medal and may be banned for 2-3 years

Azerbaijani sambo fighter Bakhtiyar Abbasov was stripped of his bronze medal, which he had received during the Sambo World Cup in Moscow, and he faces a ban from competitions for two to three years.

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

“They told me that they already had erased Abbasov’s name from the list of the tournament medal winners. It’s unfortunate, and I have to admit that I didn’t understand Abbasov. First, he said that he had felt ill during the anthem, his heart had ached, and that’s why he had crouched; then he stated that he had done that because of the Karabakh War,” Azerisport quoted Mamedov as saying.

To note, the President of the European Sambo Federation, Sergey Eliseev, had condemned Abbasov’s conduct, and noted that the disciplinary committee of the International Federation of Sambo will consider the matter of banning the Azerbaijani athlete from future competitions.

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.