Claudio Passarelli

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Claudio Passarelli (born January 18, 1965 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein ) is a former German wrestler and world champion from 1989.

Career

Claudio Passarelli is the son of Italian immigrants from Gambatesa in southern Italy and the youngest of three brothers who were all German champions in wrestling and one of them, Pasquale , even became Olympic champion in 1984 in Los Angeles . The three brothers learned to wrestle with trainer Walter Gehring at KSG Ludwigshafen. Claudio Passarelli later moved to VfK Schifferstadt .

Passarelli developed into an excellent wrestler in the Greco-Roman style at a young age, who in 1984, at the age of 19, won his first German championship in the senior lightweight division. On the international wrestling mat he had already achieved great success in 1983 in Oak Lawns, America, when he became junior world champion (up to 18 years) in the lightweight. In 1985 he won the silver medal at the 20-year-olds at the European Junior Championships in Frederikshavn / Denmark . In the final battle he met the Soviet athlete Levon Dschulfalakjan for the first time in his career , with whom he fought a few tough duels in his further wrestling career.

The next duel between these two wrestlers took place at the 1986 Senior World Championships in Budapest . Passarelli lost to Dschulfalakjan in the pool final after a good fight with 5: 9 points and won the bronze medal with a victory over the Norwegian Morten Brekke . Passarelli defeated last year's world champion Ștefan Negrișan from Romania clearly on points at this world championship in the first round .

Passarelli met an enormously strong competition at the European Championships in Tampere in 1987 , where he only ended up in 5th place despite five wins. At the world championship of the same year there was an incident with the judges. Before a fight in his pool, the jury refused to give him a weigh-in because it was of the opinion that Passarelli had already been eliminated. When the jury, following an objection from the German national coach Heinz Ostermann, recognized his mistake and weighed Passarelli, he suddenly became overweight because he had in the meantime absorbed fluids.

At the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 , Passarelli disappointed when he lost after two wins against Nandor Sabo from Yugoslavia and Kim Sung-Moon from Korea and could not place in the front field. In 1989, Passarelli had a great success. He was in Martigny / Switzerland , world champion in the lightweight. In the pool final he defeated Olympic champion Levon Dschulfalakjan and in the final Ghani Yalouz , a North African naturalized in France .

In 1990 Passarelli suffered a broken leg, which took a long break. It wasn't until 1992 that he attempted a comeback. However, he could no longer build on the very good performance of the years 1986 to 1989. After all, he reached 6th place at the European Championships in Copenhagen in 1992 and came 10th at the Olympic Games in Barcelona . In the German Olympic qualification, he prevailed against the 1989 vice world champion Janis Zamanduridis .

Claudio Passarelli then ended his international wrestling career. He worked for his club VfK Schifferstadt for a long time in various areas and fought in the Bundesliga, most recently in 2003 as a 38-year-old.

Passarelli is still active as a member of the Pälzer Ausles .

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, WM = World Championship, EM = European Championship, GR = Greco-Roman style, Le = lightweight, We = welterweight, then up to 68 kg or 74 kg body weight)

  • 1987, 7th place , Junior World Championships in Colorado Springs / USA, GR, Le, with a victory over Kim Seung-Young, Korea, and defeats against Ruben Grigorjan and Rumen Gentschew, Bulgaria;
  • 1988, 1st place , Grand Prix of the FRG in Neuss , GR, Le, ahead of Petre Cărare, Jerzy Kopanski, Martin Kornbakk and Lars Lagerborg, both Swedes;
  • 1988, 13th place , OS in Seoul , GR, Le, with victories over Frank Abial, France , and Zhao Jiangniang, PR China , and losses to Nandor Sabo and Kim Sung-Moon, Korea ;
  • 1990, 1st place , Grand Prix of the FRG in Saarbrücken , GR, Le, ahead of Ghani Yalouz, Attila Repka, Lars Lagerborg, Petre Cărare and Martin Kornbakk;
  • 1990, 11th place , EM in Poznan , GR, Le, with a victory over Vassiliadis Daskalos, Greece, and defeats against Ghani Yalouz and Islam Duguschiew , USSR;
  • 1992, 6th place , EM in Copenhagen , GR, Le, with victories over Jukko Loikas, Finland, Tomasz Brezny, Czechoslovakia, and Andris Staschkewitsch, Latvia, and defeats against Stojan Dobrew, Bulgaria, Attila Repka, Valeri Nikitin, Estonia , and Ryszard Wolny , Poland

German championships

swell

  • 1) Various issues of the specialist magazine "Der Ringer" from 1983 to 2003
  • 2) International Wrestling Database of the University of Leipzig

literature

  • Claudio Passarelli. In: Gerhard Sellinger: At home in the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis. Sellinger, Schifferstadt 2010, p. 139.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Passarelli, Claudio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German wrestler
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Ludwigshafen am Rhein