Russian naturalized Romanian freestyle wrestler Albert Saritov earned the fifth medal for Romania at this year Olympics Games in Rio de Janeiro. He won Sunday the bronze medal at men’s 97-kg freestyle wrestling competition after defeating Georgian Elizbar Odikadze in the decisive match.
Saritov (31) won by a score of 10-0 on technical points (4-0 classification points).
The bronze won in the last day of Rio Olympics is Romania’s first Olympic medal in wrestling after 24 years.
The Russian athlete was noticed by the President of the Romanian Wrestling Federation, Razvan Parcalabu and was naturalized by government order, being considered a sportsman with medal potential.
Saritov spent about 14 days in Romania and knows just four expressions in Romanian: “Hello!”, “How are you?”, “Good”, “Thank you”, but he does not know the anthem, according to sport.ro.
For Rio Olympics, Saritov has prepared only in Russia.
This is also the fifth medal of the Romanian delegation at Rio after the gold won by women’s epee team, the silver obtained by tennis players Florin Mergea and Horia Tecau in the men’s doubles, the bronze took by Gabriel Sîncrăian at weightlifting (85 kg category) and the one conquered by women’s 8 +1 rowing team.
Albert Saritov passed in eighths Moldavian Nicolai Ceban, in quarters was surpassed by American Kyle Snyder, and in reclassification he fought against the Cuban Javier Cortina Lacerra, before defeating Odikadze.
The athlete of Chechen origin representing Romania at the Olympics Games was promised a fabulous bonus if he would have won the gold medal: luxury car, a thoroughbred Arabian horse and 10 kg of gold.