Russia’s Sergey Emelin is a current world and European number two in Greco-Roman wrestling. He is also a former world champion, European champion, European under-23 champion, World Cup silver medallist, and world junior bronze medallist. He managed to rack up this amazing array of achievements before he’d got anywhere near his 25th birthday. His biggest win in on home turf was the 2018 Ivan Poddubny Memorial, a tournament named after one of Russia’s all-time great wrestlers. He has qualified to represent his country at the Tokyo Olympics.
Emelin was born in 1995 in Ruzayevka, a town in the Republic of Mordovia in western Russia, and still lives and trains there. His first taste of major international wrestling success came during summer 2014 when he travelled to Croatia to compete in the World Junior Championships. He took home a bronze medal, finishing joint third with France’s Yasin Ozay. He then bided his time until the European Under-23 Championships, held in Bulgaria in early 2016. He came home victorious, having beaten Azerbaijan’s Murad Mammadov. Two months later, he was part of the eight-strong Russian team that competed in the Wrestling World Cup in Iran, helping them to a second-place finish behind the host nation.
In 2017, Emelin travelled to Poland to have a crack at the World U-23 Championships. The trip was a success, as he won silver, losing only to Japan’s Masuto Kawana, and again helping his country to finish runner-up in the medal table. The following year, he dominated the 60kg category, winning both the world and European championships.
