Nelson Dawidjan

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Nelson Dawidjan ( Armenian Նելսոն Դավիդյան ; born April 6, 1950 in Tschartar , Xocavənd district (today de facto Martuni Province ), Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic ; †  September 11, 2016 in Kiev ) was a Soviet wrestler . He was silver medalist at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal and world and European champion in wrestling in Greco-Roman style in featherweight and lightweight .

Career

Nelson Dawidjan came from an Armenian family from Nagorno-Karabakh who moved to Grozny in 1958 . There he began wrestling in 1964 with his brother Oleg, who was three years his junior. Igor Kondrazki became her trainer. Both brothers were very talented and soon celebrated notable successes in the Greco-Roman style at the regional level. You were then delegated to the Dynamo Kiev sports club in 1972. At Dynamo Kiev, Nelson Dawidjan enjoyed the perks that were usual for a top athlete in the Soviet Union at the time , was able to concentrate fully on wrestling and studied sport on the side. At the age of 19 he had already reached the top Soviet class in bantamweight and made his international debut at the European Championships in Berlin in 1970 . In Berlin he had two wins and one draw, but was then completely unexpectedly defeated by Jürgen Penquitt from the GDR , who was eliminated and only finished in 6th place, which was unsatisfactory for him.

It was therefore initially no longer used in the senior sector by the Soviet Union at international championships. At the Junior World Championships in Tokyo in 1971 he was at the start and took 2nd place in the class up to 65 kg body weight behind Konstantin Traykow from Bulgaria .

In some statistics Nelson Dawidjan is also listed as Junior European Champion 1972 and even Junior World Champion 1973. But both of these are wrong. His brother Oleg became Junior European Champion 1972 in the class up to 65 kg body weight, and Junior World Championships 1973 did not take place at all. In addition, 1971 was his last junior year. Born in 1950, in 1972 and 1973, he would not have been able to take part in international championships in the junior sector, because he had already exceeded the age limit of 21 years.

In 1973 Nelson’s international abstinence ended and he became European featherweight champion in Helsinki . He presented himself in very good form, defeated the dangerous Kazimierz Lipień from Poland and was defeated by the Hungarian László Réczi , but this could no longer prevent his title win.

A year later Nelson had to represent the injured lightweight Shamil Chissamutdinow at the World Championships in Katowice . He did it with flying colors and became lightweight world champion with six wins. Among the wrestlers he defeated were such experts as Lars-Erik Skiöld from Sweden , Heinz-Helmut Wehling from the GDR and Andrzej Supron from Poland .

Nelson was also world champion in 1975, but this time in his traditional weight class, the featherweight. He defeated u. a. László Réczi, Ion Păun from Romania and again Kazimierz Lipień.

Nelson therefore drove to the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal as the clear favorite . At first everything seemed to be going smoothly for him. He celebrated u. a. Victories over Stylianos Migiakis from Greece and Kazimirz Lipień, but then lost to László Réczi from Hungary, as was the case at the 1973 European Championships, helping Kazimierz Lipień, who again won against Réczi, to win the gold medal . For Nelson Dawidjan “only” the silver medal remained .

In 1977 Nelson was defeated at the European Championships in Bursa to the Romanian Ion Păun, who was in top form that year, and took 2nd place in the featherweight division. At the World Championships of the same year in Gothenburg he lost to Kazimierz Lipień and László Réczi and finished 4th. 1978 and 1979 Nelson came to no appearances in international championships. The national competition was extremely strong. Especially Boris Kramarenko , behind whom he had finished 2nd in the featherweight division in the 1978 Soviet championship, was preferred to him by the Soviet sports officials.

It was not until 1980 that Nelson was sent back to the featherweight division at the European Championships in Prievidza . There he was, although he lost again to Ion Păun, European champion for the second time. At the Olympic Games in Moscow, Boris Kramarenko was used anyway, who did not meet expectations by winning the bronze medal.

Nelson Dawidjan then ended his international wrestling career and became a coach in Kiev.

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, WM = World Championship, EM = European Championship, GR = Greco-Roman style, Ba = Bantamweight, Fe = featherweight, Le = lightweight, back then up to 57 kg, 52 kg and 67 kg body weight)

Individual evidence

  1. Скончался известный спортсмен, двукратный чемпион мира Нельсон Давидян . Новости-Армения / News Armenia, September 11, 2016, accessed September 15, 2016 (Russian).

swell

  • various issues of the specialist magazines "Athletik" from 1969 to 1975 and "Der Ringer" from 1976 to 1980,
  • Documentation of FILA International Wrestling Championships, 1976

Web links