Wrestling
Wrestling has been a successful sport in the Olympics for Armenia. Half of the twelve Armenian Olympic medalists and were wrestlers. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Armen Nazaryan won the gold in the Men's Greco-Roman Flyweight (52 kg) category, and Armen Mkrtchyan won the silver in Men's Freestyle Paperweight (48 kg) category, securing Armenia's first two medals in its modern Olympic history.
With Armenia's only gold medalist, Nazaryan, only two silver medalists, Mkrtchyan and Arsen Julfalakyan, and half of entire Olympic medalists being wrestlers, wrestling is Armenia's most successful Olympic sport.
Armenia hosted the 2010 FILA Wrestling World Cup. The Armenian wrestling team came in third place overall and Armenian wrestlers individually won three of the seven gold medals.
Traditional Armenian wrestling is called kokh, and practiced in traditional garb; it was one of the influences included in the Soviet combat sport of sambo, which is also very popular.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Armenia
Famous quotes containing the word wrestling:
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the very moment when the sun steps out, and says: “I will the sun to rise”; and at him who cannot stop the wheel, and says: “I will it to roll”; and at him who is taken down in a wrestling match, and says: “I lie here, but I will that I lie here!” And yet, all laughter aside, do we ever do anything other than one of these three things when we use the expression, “I will”?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)