There’s plenty of strange events in sports. Today we’re looking at a viral incident that happened at the World Armwrestling Championships.
The Championships were held in the Turkish city of Antalya. There a pair of Kazakhstan armwrestlers tried to display their flag on the podium and basically cover the flag of their Turkish rival.
Diana Tyukova and Dana Asanova finished second and third respectfully in the junior under 50kg division using their left arm. They proceeded to unfurl a big flag of Kazakhstan on the podium prior to the golden medalist even arriving to the podium.
Turkey’s Caglayan Derya Ceren had effectively no room to display her own flag and attempted to hold her smaller Turkish flag over the Kazakh one.
A comedic exchange followed during which the youngsters battled for prime flag position on the podium.
After a big back and forth Kazakh competitors settled for holding a flag behind their Turkish rival.
In an attempt to downplay the incident head coach of the Kazakh national armwrestling team and the Committee of Sports and Physical Education said:
“sometimes in sport of the highest level, the competitive spirit is transferred from the arena to the podium.”
“This is the ambition and tenaciousness of real athletes,” it added, according to Tengri News, claiming that Tyukova and Anasova “jokingly took over” the podium.
“Nevertheless, such a moment does not affect the general state of affairs and the friendship between the athletes of Kazakhstan and Turkey,” the committee insisted.
“We discussed this issue already, with the coaches and with the girls. This, of course, will not happen again. We apologize to everyone and, of course, to sports fans from all over the world for this incident,” Asainov said.
“The girls are about 16 years old, this is their first major competition, they were nervous. We do not justify their misconduct, [but] we will talk to them again,” Asainov added.
The World Armwrestling Championships are happening from October 14 to 23, with 1,700 athletes from 50 countries taking part.