The first National Championship took place on 11th of March in the beautiful capital of Moldova, Chisinau.
The competition was held in one of the halls of the National University of Sports. Everything was arranged perfectly by the President of the Moldova Federation Marcel Dariel, who has all the ambition and dedication to develop a highly competitive environment for this sport, with the help of Mihail and Alexandru Grumeza, which I know well from Romanian National Championships. They are coming every year and they are very active and doing a good job as referees.
The President Marcel Darie decided for the first Championship to invite the General Secretary of the World Armwrestling Federation, Mircea Simionescu-Simicel alongside with the Office Assistant of WAF Angelina Sinabova and 4 referees from Romania, myself, Tiberiu Mihalcea, Deniz Ibram and Daniel Petre, together with Mihail Grumeza and Alexei Ioan from the Moldova team of referees.
The championship was held at two tables, for 126 competitors, doing both hands in one day. It was a very good job done by all the referees, who respected the standard of the competition working united as a team and also many thanks to Angelina Sinabova who proved to be always there, active, and supporting the referees in every request we had.
In the Open Class we had their rising star Daniel Procopciuc who won in 2016 medals in all the major competitions around the world, qualified in the final at both hands, winning the left but on the right hand he was defeated by Andrei Minascurta, after a wonderful fight.
The Women open Class was won on both hands by Mihaela Lazari who proved to have no rival yet in Moldova.
Everything in Moldova shows a perfect example of how fast a Federation can progress that has under one year since the beginning, if things are done in a correct way and the people involved have the desire to develop the sport and work together.
Congratulations to Marcel Darie, Mihail Grumeza, Alexandru Grumeza and everybody who worked and organized this beautiful Championship.
Moldova proved to be a great place to visit and an excellent Federation to work with.
EAF Assistant Director of Referees
Eduard Dimiean
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