Irakli Tsirekidze ( Georgian ირაკლი ცირეკიძე , May 3, 1982 ), a Georgian judoist of medium and light heavy weight categories, played for the Georgian national team in the mid-2000s and early 2010s. Champion of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, world champion, silver and double bronze medalist of European championships, European champion in team discipline, winner of many tournaments of national and international importance.
| Irakli Tsirekidze | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Citizenship |  Georgia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date of Birth | May 3, 1982 (37 years) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Growth | 184 cm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight category | light heavy (up to 100 kg) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Content
Biography
Irakli Tsirekidze was born on May 3, 1982. He made his first appearance in the 2002 season, taking the seventh place in the welterweight at the home international A-class tournament in Tbilisi.
He achieved his first serious success at the international level in 2005 when he entered the main team of the Georgian national team and visited the World Cup in Prague and Tbilisi, from where he brought awards of bronze and silver dignity, respectively, won in the standings of average weight. In addition, this season he performed at the European Championships in Rotterdam, where, however, he could not be among the winners, losing to Italian Roberto Meloni at the semifinals stage. A year later, he won a command discipline at the team world championship in Paris.
In 2007, he added a silver medal to the list received at the European Championships in Belgrade - in the decisive bout of average weight, he was defeated by the representative of Ukraine, Valentina Grekova . Later he won the World Championships in Rio de Janeiro, including winning the final of the Olympic champion from Greece Ilias Iliadis . He received another gold award at the European Team Championship in Minsk, where the Georgian national team took the upper hand over all the other teams.
At the 2008 European Championships in Lisbon, Tsirekidze took bronze - the only defeat he suffered here in the semifinals from Azerbaijani Elkhan Mamedov . At the World Team Championships in Tokyo, he was again the best in the Georgian team. Thanks to a series of successful performances, he won the right to defend the country's honor at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing - on average, he defeated all four opponents, including Russian Ivan Pershin in the semifinals and Algerian Amar Benichlef in the final, thus becoming an Olympic champion.
After the Beijing Olympics, Irakli Tsirekidze remained in the main line-up of the judo team of Georgia and continued to take part in major international tournaments, although he rose in the light heavyweight category. So, in 2009, he won bronze medals at the Grand Prix of Hamburg and at the European Cup in Sindelfingen. The following season, he won the World Cup stage in Paris, a year later became the bronze medalist at the European Championship in Istanbul, where he lost to the Latvian representative Yevgeny Borodko in the quarterfinals, and the bronze medalist at the world championship in Paris, where he was defeated by the Belgian Elco in the same quarter-finals van der Gesta.
In 2012, Tsirekidze spoke at the European Championships in Chelyabinsk and was soon disqualified by a decision of the International Judo Federation (IJF) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for a period of three months for the forbidden drug found in the blood (the name of the drug was not specified). They took away the bronze award won at the Grand Slam tournament in Tokyo in December 2011 and deprived 120 points in the world-ranking IJF sheet [1] .
Since Tsirekidze was at that time the clear leader of the national team, it was expected that he would represent the country at the 2012 Olympics in London , but the Austrian coach of the Georgian team, Peter Zeizenbacher, included Levan Zhorzholiani instead. Despite his good physical condition and successful training, Zirekidze allegedly told the coach that he was not psychologically prepared. Tamaz Naveriani, one of the vice presidents of the Georgian judo federation, who was present at the same press conference, said that Zhorzholiani is better because he is 258 points ahead of Tsirekidze, and besides, the latter did not come to the meeting dedicated to the preparation process . Journalists at the press conference considered the arguments of Zirekidze to be very strange and unsuccessfully tried to contact him [2] .
Since then, he no longer participated in major international tournaments, deciding to end his career as a professional athlete.
Awards
- Presidential Order "Shining"
Notes
- ↑ Olympic champion Irakli Tsirekidze disqualified for the use of doping . Schools of struggle. The appeal date is November 14, 2015.
- ↑ Otar Maglakelidze. Expected Olympic Team (eng.) . WorldSport.Ge (8 July 2012). The appeal date is August 27, 2012. Archived October 26, 2012.
Links
- Irakli Tsirekidze - Olympic statistics on the website Sports-Reference.com (English)
- Irakli Tsirekidze - profile on judoinside.com (English)