‘The way of hands and feet’ in the Caucasus

In Moscow on August 4-16, the Dynamo Palace of Sports in Krylatskoye will host the First Taekwondo Grand Prix, the results of which will be determined by the strongest athletes in eight Olympic weight categories. The second stage of the Grand Prix will be held on September 18-20 in Samsun (Turkey), the third on October 16-18 in Manchester (UK), and the finale on December 3-4 in Mexico City (Mexico).

The Korean martial art has become popular in Russia, particularly in the Caucasus.

Anatoly Terekhov, President of the Russian Union of Taekwondo said that ‘’The martial arts are developing strongly, and I hope there will be an Olympic champion in taekwondo. Yesterday evening I just came from Dagestan, Khasavyurt, where there are the first matches of the international meeting of the teams of Russia, Iran and Kazakhstan. These athletes are at that age when we are saying that they will be selected for the 2020 Olympics. And  these athletes are planning to hold joint training exercises before the end of the month, which, in principle, is a tradition in this region.’’

The word ‘Taekwondo’ is made up of three words: ‘Tae’ - a foot, ‘kwon’ - a fist (hand), ‘do’ - art. The Taekwondo way is the way of hands and feet, it is a system of spiritual training and self-defense techniques without weapons, using bare hands and feet.

The Dagestani sports gym for Taekwondo is one of the best in the North Caucasus Federal District. This summer in the Khasavyurt Hamid Hamidov Sports Palace an open championship in Taekwondo was held, which brought together about 50 young athletes from Dagestan and Chechnya, and in the fall, the strongest athletes, champions of Europe, international tournaments of Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, will compete there. In Dagestan it is believed that such tournaments are very important not only for the athletes, but also for the peoples of the CIS countries, these events strengthen mutual understanding and promote patriotic education and help to eliminate such phenomena as terrorism and extremism from society. Then the head coach of the youth team of Russia in Taekwondo, living in Khasavuyrt, Arslanbek Shabazov, who coached many famous fighters at international level, noted the high class of the athletes.

‘’We cooperate with the region, more than five years with Khasavyurt. I'm ready to do a little advertising for them in the sense that they have really a huge Sports Palace by the standards of a small town. Competitions of all levels can be carried out there, there is a hall with 500 seats, a huge hotel is there, again at the local ... And we plan to make this event a tradition there. We are going to invite teams from all the neighboring regions, sportsmen from Azerbaijan and Turkey are often going there. So we have another place of this kind. You know, in Dagestan, there is wrestling basically, and other martial arts. So, for me, too, it was a surprise that in Khasavyurt there are six Olympic champions. Imagine, six! However, there is still no champion in taekwondo but, God willing, there will be,’’  Anatoly Terekhov said.