Azernews.Az

By Laman Ismayilova

The Azerbaijani team has ranked first in the overall medal count of the first Alpagut World Cup held in Batumi, Georgia.

The national fighters won 51 medals, including 24 gold, 22 silver and 5 bronze, Trend life reported.

One of the memorable moments of the competition was the victory of Azerbaijani fighter Elvin over the three-time world champion in kickboxing Temuri Glonti .

President of National Alpagut Federation, Agil Ajalov stressed the high level preparedness of the national sportsmen.

"This is a historic victory of our athletes as we are the winners of the first Alpagut World Cup. Together with the head of SecretaryAAF Rafig Qasimov, I want to congratulate our fighters on this success. We'll continue to raise our country's flag at international competitions," he said.

Alpagut is a martial art with its canons, traditions and philosophy. The word Alpagut consists of two words- Alp which means ‘warrior’ and kulsal that means ‘saint’. These are saint soldiers who battled for the sake of national and universal ideals.

The ancient sport which combines mixed Turkic martial arts consists of three systems: Aypara, Batur, and Jima. Alpagut technique involves the use of a knife, bow shooting, sword, and horse racing.

Preserving its uniqueness Alpagut could retain its relevance nowadays. A lot of alpagut sports schools were opened in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, Australia, Iran, USA, Canada, Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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