The 21-year-old native of the Dashoguz velayat, Sanjarbek Avazberdiyev, has written a new bright page in the history of Turkmen sports by winning a gold medal at the jubilee 50th World Sambo Championships in Tashkent. A first-year student of the Turkmen State Institute of Physical Culture and Sports achieved this remarkable success in combat sambo in the weight category up to 64 kg, where 18 athletes competed for the awards.
On his path to the top step of the podium, Sanjarbek won five convincing victories, conceding only one point to his opponents throughout the entire tournament. In the first round, he defeated the silver medalist of the 2026 Pan American Championships, Lenin Guerra from Ecuador, with a score of 6:0; in the round of 16, he crushed Yan Raskin from Ukraine – 9:0; and in the quarterfinal, 53 seconds before the end of the bout, he inflicted a sensitive defeat on the 26-year-old 2026 African champion Abdelmounim Faroukhi from Morocco – 8:0.
In the semifinal, the Turkmen athlete prevailed over the 34-year-old 2024 European champion and silver medalist of the 2024 World Championships, Mais Nersesyan from Armenia – 8:1; and in the final, 2 minutes 30 seconds before the end of the bout, he achieved a beautiful early victory over the 30-year-old multiple bronze medalist of world championships and current bronze medalist of the 2026 European Championships, Yauhen Mikhno from Belarus – 8:0.
Sanjarbek Avazberdiyev, who will turn 22 on 18 November 2026, became a world champion in combat sambo for the first time in his career. Previously, last year he twice won silver medals at World Cups in Armenia and Tajikistan, and in April of this year he won first place for the first time at the World Cup in Yerevan. Sanjarbek took his first steps in sports in Dashoguz under the guidance of his first coach, Shovket Matkurbanov, and currently he is perfecting his athletic mastery in Ashgabat as part of the national team of Turkmenistan.
The large-scale world championship is being held at the modern "Game Sports Arena" in the Olympic Village of Tashkent and has gathered a record number of sambo athletes from 101 countries. For comparison: at the very first World Sambo Championships in 1973 in Tehran, representatives of only 11 states participated, and over the years the number of participating countries has grown more than ninefold.
Over the course of three days of competition, sambo athletes are competing for 33 sets of medals in three disciplines among men and women: sport sambo, combat sambo and blind sambo (in the SVI1 class, totally blind athletes compete). A landmark event of this year was that, for the first time in the history of the International Sambo Federation (FIAS), competitions in sambo for the blind among women were included in the program of the world championships, which emphasizes the organization's commitment to the principles of inclusivity and global development.
The total prize fund of the jubilee 2026 World Championships amounts to 363,000 US dollars. According to the regulations, gold medalists will receive 4,000 dollars each, silver medalists – 3,000 dollars each, and bronze medal winners – 2,000 dollars each.
