ARNOLD EUROPE: RUSSIAN DESANT ON THE SPANISH STROHNGHOLD

by Andrew Michalak

The second, biggest and better Arnold Classic Europe will take place in the mid October in Madrid, Spain. It’s not something unexpected that Spain will enter the biggest team of 75 athletes! It’s a huge number but wait… The second biggest team is Italy, with 63 athletes and then Russia, with 38 athletes. These three countries only could do a nice continental championships (175 athletes)! But read more… According to the IFBB General Secretary Bill Tierney, altogether, there are over 600 competitors! This numbers are shocking and prove how quickly IFBB is developing. The only problem is how to put all these athletes through the stage and assess them according to the IFBB standards in a limited time of 2 ½ days. IFBB Judging Committee Chairman Pawel Filleborn must find solution to this problem and we can trust in his experience.
There are many, many top IFBB stars but the most impressive to me is the super heavyweight class, with incredible number of 33 giants with bodyweight over 100 kg! I have never seen so long line-up in this category. Only Russia entered as many as
6 mass monsters what is a real “Russian desant”. The list of super heavyweight class is as follows:

1. Dave Titterton United Kingdom
2. Oliver Price United Kingdom
3. Fernand Olloz Switzerland
4. Vusumzi Njisane South Africa
5. Alex Michael Betts Singapore
6. Igor Gostiunin Russia
7. Pavel Kirilenko Russia
8. Dmitry Karakash Russia
9. Paata Petriashvili Russia
10. Maxim Samoilo Russia
11. Vitaly Fateev Russia
12. Andrey Leonov Russia
13. Mikhail Sidorychev Russia
14. Marek Olejniczak Poland
15. Andrzej Kolodziejczyk Poland
16. Bartosz Guran Poland
17. Alessandro De Filippi Italy
18. Costantino Galeazzo Italy
19. Alessandro Grassi Italy
20. Gianluca Silvestrini Italy
21. Luca Pennazzato Italy
22. Amirhossein Jalilvand Iran
23. Eshagh Ghavidel Iran
24. Markus Hoppe Germany
25. Patrick Johnson Denmark
26. Radek Lonc Czech Republic
27. Tomáš Kašpar Czech Republic
28. Petr B?ezna Czech Republic
29. Jerome Bravo Canada
30. Franco Domínguez Argentina
31. Bernat Scourus Spain
32. Ramon Gonzalez Spain
33. Roberto Herranz del Amo Spain

Main pretenders to the top three places? Ha, ha, so many new athletes and some of them will battle in this class for the first time… Who knows? But the most successful till now are:

Ramon Gonzales – 2002 world champion
Pavel Kirilenko – Arnold America 100 kg class winner
Mikhail Sidorychev – two-time European +100 kg category winner
Dave Titterton – 2012 Arnold America 5th place winner
Andrzej Kolodziejczyk – 2011 Men’s Worlds runner-up
Petr Brezna – 2011 Arnold Europe 3rd place winner

Pictures:



Michail Sidorychev in summer.



Petr Brezna.



Pavel Kirilenko.



Alessandro Grassi.



Radek Lonc.



Alessandro De Filippi.



Markus Hoppe.



From L: Andrzej Kolodziejczyk, Marek Olejniczak.



Dave Titterton.



Paata Petriashvili.



Vusumzi Njisane.



Jerome Bravo.

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