MOSCOW, April 6, 2012 - Very soon, on May 17-21, the European Championships will be held in the Universal Sports Hall “Druzhba” (“Friendship”) in Moscow.

The best athletes from over 20 countries of the Old Continent traditionally take part in the tournament in order to determine the strongest in sport and combat SAMBO in tough competition. The best ones are those who are in top competition form that can only be achieved by long and intense training. The top readiness should be at the start date. And if it happens it will be the day of the athletes triumph, European triumph in this particular case.

Every national team in Europe makes its own way to the victory and there are no recipes here. Everybody wants to win the medal but the Croatians proved to have their own additional motivation.

Croatian SAMBO Federation under the direction of its President Željko Banić is now actively working for the promotion of SAMBO and is doing its best in order to be recognized by the Olympic Committee of the country. The superior sports body of Croatia is waiting for the medals to be won by its SAMBO representatives at major European and World Championships. The medals may become one of the key factors that will help the Federation to gain recognition. And recognition means support of the State that will help this kind of sport to be developed more successfully in Croatia.

In this regard, the Croatian Federation is developing the grassroots sports to attract to SAMBO children and youth as well as attracting the elite athletes engaged in similar martial arts such as judo and mixed martial arts who are able to excellent results in the shortest period of time in case of skillful retraining.

In the framework of preparation for the European Championships, Croatia decided to intensify the process of formation and training of the national team for the main continental tournament of the season by attracting the best coaches.

As the result, the elite Croatian athletes trained during two weeks in March in its capital Zagreb under the guidance of FIAS Sports Director Dmitry Maximov and experienced representatives of Russian SAMBO School Dilshod Makhmadbekov and Igor Antonyuk.

30 Croatian athletes improved their skills of combat and sports SAMBO. The best of those 30 were chosen for the Croatian National team who will take part in the European Championships in Moscow. Now the team consists of 7 persons: 4 combat sambists and 3 representatives of sports SAMBO (two men and one woman).

Two weeks are quite a long time and it was enough to deal with all the situations in ground work, in standing position, as well as in the combat techniques which were of interest for the Croatian athletes.

FIAS representatives answered all the questions such as releasing from grips, defending oneself against armed attacker, or transition from standing position to mat wrestling.

The answers were given and the new extensive knowledge was transformed into practical abilities skills during the two weeks. Now there is an uneasy challenge to transform the abilities in motor skills which athletes need to fight a SAMBO bout.

FIAS would like to wish this young but very successful Federation the best and the most important thing they need now – the medals of the upcoming European Championships 2012.