#development

Baattiah first female member of Saudi Wrestling's board

Sunday, June 12, 2022 - 11:36 By United World Wrestling Press

Share this article

CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, Switzerland (June 10) -- In a significant step forward for women’s wrestling in Saudi Arabia as well as the United World Wrestling’s push for gender equality, Amal BAATTIAH has been elected as the first female member of the Saudi Arabian Wrestling Federation’s executive board.

Baattiah’s election is part of the wider strategy for wrestling in Saudi Arabia, which has witnessed rapid growth in the last few years thanks to the support and cooperation between the Saudi Wrestling Federation and UWW.

It also underlines the importance of the UWW’s development programs, which are providing immediate results in improving gender equality in wrestling. Baattiah was a participant in the Women Lead Sports Master Program, which was spearheaded by world-renowned expert Gabriela Mueller.

The Women Lead Sports Master Program has been designed to empower participants to shape the future of wrestling as a global sport, learn effective leadership strategies and techniques, and increase a diverse leadership talent pool within all levels at the UWW.

Baattiah graduated from the program in January 2022. And earlier this month, she broke the glass ceiling by becoming the first woman to get elected to the Saudi Arabian Wrestling Federation board. Her election marks another landmark moment for the development of the sport in Saudi Arabia.

In the last few years, with support from the UWW, the country has taken important initiatives to educate its coaches and referees, developed infrastructure and focussed on the grassroots.

Since 2017, the Saudi Arabian Wrestling Federation has held coaching and refereeing courses every year, except for the break forced by the pandemic. These courses were held under the supervision of UWW-certified educators.

In January 2021, the first-ever introduction to refereeing course was conducted for women and later that year, in December, a similar course for women coaches was organized.

Olympic bronze medalists Marwa AMRI (TUN) and Clarissa CHUN (USA) attend the introduction of coaches course in Saudi Arabia, (Photo: United World Wrestling)

The country’s wrestlers have also been a part of the UWW’s More than Medals program every year for the last five years. As much as sporting skills, the workshop teaches the wrestlers life skills, which help them prepare for a career after sport.

At the same time, there have been constant efforts to improve the wrestling infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian Wrestling Federation established three training centres in 2015 and one in 2018. These centers are situated in Riyadh, Dammam, Makkah and Jeddah. Over the years, the UWW has donated six wrestling mats to Saudi Arabia while the national federation has imported four more mats. In the first six months of this year, 10 new mats have already arrived in Riyadh.

On the administrative front, Saudi Arabian Wrestling Federation President Fahad ALFARRAJ was elected as a vice-president of the Arab Wrestling Federation.

All these developmental activities have shown results on the mat.

Wrestlers from Saudi Arabia participated in the World Championships for the first time in 2017. It was also the first-ever world-level participation by the country’s wrestlers since 1980.

Since then, Saudi wrestlers have been a constant presence at junior and senior international tournaments and have started to make their presence felt on the podium as well. In 2019, the country won a bronze medal at the World School Combat Games in Budapest. In the same year, four Saudi Arabian wrestlers won bronze medals at the U15 Asian Championships in Chinese Taipei.

In 2022, Saudi Arabia won its first-ever Arab Championship gold medal, with five wrestlers finishing on top of the podium at the U17 and U20 Arab Championship in Makkah. Saudi Arabia was ranked second in the championship where 12 Arab countries participated.

In 2023, Saudi Arabia will host the U17 and U23 Asian Championship and will also host the Arab Championships for both age groups for the first time ever.

#JapanWrestling

Paris Olympic Champ Sakurai Retires at Age 24

Sunday, April 5, 2026 - 09:12 By Ken Marantz

Share this article

TOKYO (April 4) -- Having never really regained the motivation that led her to achieve her ultimate goal of an Olympic gold, Tsugumi SAKURAI (JPN) has decided to retire at the tender age of 24.

Sakurai, the women’s 57kg champion at the Paris Olympics, has announced that she will hang up her singlet and begin a second career nurturing a new generation of wrestlers and serving as a goodwill ambassador of sports for her native Kochi Prefecture in western Japan.

“After 21 continuous years, I feel I have reached the cutoff point of my wrestling career, so I have decided to retire,” Sakurai said at a press conference Friday at the Kochi Prefecture government office.

“I gave everything I had for the Olympics, and I was able to experience the feeling of achievement and the ultimate joy. It's difficult to win the Olympics without determination. I couldn't get back to the mindset I had before Paris. That is the biggest reason [for retiring].”

Known for her steely aggressiveness belying a quiet demeanor, and a wicked use of a 2-on-1 arm bar, Sakurai prefaced her triumph in Paris by winning three consecutive world titles, at 55kg in 2021 and back-to-back golds at 57kg in 2022 and 2023.

A U17 world champion in 2016, she won golds at the Asian Championships and Asian Games in 2022 and 2023, respectively, but suffered the second of just two career international losses at the 2024 Asian Championships, where she fell to Yongxian FENG (CHN) in the final.

She bounced back five months later for her crowning achievement in Paris, where she defeated 2016 Rio Olympic champion Helen MAROULIS (USA) 10-4 in the semifinals, then took the gold with a 6-0 victory over Anastasia NICHITA (MDA) in a rematch of the 2023 world final.

Making the win in Paris even more special was the fact that not only did Sakurai strike gold, but so did another Japanese wrestler who started the sport together with her at the kids wrestling club in Kochi run by her father.

Kotaro KIYOOKA (JPN), the freestyle 65kg champion in his Olympic debut, and Sakurai became the toast of Kochi, a rural prefecture fronting the Pacific on the island of Shikoku. They were paraded through the streets of the prefectural capital of Kochi City and hailed as heroes.

Like almost all of Japan’s medalists in Paris, the two took time off from the sport to run the gauntlet of TV interviews and variety shows, and just chill out in general. Sakurai, who returned to Kochi and started graduate studies in sport sciences at Kochi University, was particularly slow in returning to the mat.

In what would prove to be her first – and last – competition after Paris, she won the 57kg title at the second-tier Japan Women’s Open in October 2025, ostensibly to qualify for the Emperor’s Cup All-Japan Championships the following December. That would be the starting point for domestic qualifying for major global tournaments.

But Sakurai never made it to the Emperor’s Cup, and has now fully turned the corner on a new career.

“Over the past year, this decision was made after talking to many people, fretting about it, and thinking things through,” she said.

Sakurai said that as an extension of her father’s Kochi Wrestling Club, she wants to run a series of clinics outside of the city, mainly in her hometown of Konan just to the east of Kochi, to expose more children to wrestling and help it grow.

“Aside from wrestling, I'm learning so many things in graduate school right now, so I want to acquire a wide range of knowledge so that I can give back to Kochi Prefecture properly,” Sakurai said. “I think there will be various problems when I put things into practice, so I want to acquire solid knowledge so that I can solve those problems.”

Fans at this week’s Asian Championships in Bishkek will see another product of the Kochi Wrestling Club in action in Moe KIYOOKA (JPN), Kotaro’s younger sister and a former world champion who will be looking to add the 53kg gold to the one she won at 55kg in 2024. She and Sakurai were also teammates at Ikuei University.

And the name Sakurai might soon be appearing on the world stage again. Her younger sister, Tsukino SAKURAI (JPN), won the Asian U15 title last year.