Turkmenistan Wins First Olympic Medal!

Silver for weightlifter Polina Guryeva!

Some of my readers might say: Where? Where is Turkmenistan? it is a former Soviet Republic, now independent nation in Central Asia. I am sorry not to write on this on on July 27 when it happened. I figured this was not their first medal overall and did not check against the LIST.

I am fascinated with Turkmenistan for many of the same reasons as when I wrote the article in 2016 about its close neighbor Tajikistan. It has a beautiful flag:

Wikipedia says it is based on the carpet industry in its country. I still think it is majestic. Drew Binsky, a young US national has made it his goal to visit every country on earth did this neat video and this one too while in Turkmenistan. Good viewing of the capital city and nation.

But we are here to tout the new national hero and honor the nation with a victory lap and here is the national anthem.

Two articles on Polina Guryeva who won silver in the 59kg weightlifting (That is a weight class for the competitors not the weight to lift):

One from the official Turkmenistan government site and the other is from a Western news source (NBC channel 5 in Chicago).

The first Olympic silver medal in the history of independent Turkmenistan was won today by the master of sports from Ashgabat Polina Guryeva at the Tokyo Games. The student of the Turkmen State Institute of Physical Culture and Sports achieved this success in the weight category up to 59 kg, in which representatives of 14 countries competed.

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Polina Guryeva has been actively involved in sports since 2011. At first she attended the gymnastics section, after which she joined weightlifting. She learned the “basics” of this difficult sport for the fair sex with her first coach Akhmed Sariyev, under whose leadership she won a gold medal at the IV Solidarity Games of Islamic Countries held in 2017 in Baku. Currently, P. Guryeva is training at the school of higher sports skills of Turkmenistan with the head coach of the national team Artur Emiryan.

The NBC 5 TV in Chicago had a nice picture of of the very happy Turkmenian weightlifter. And here is a video of the national anthem:

All pursuant to the Sanders Olympic Policy. Congrats to Polina Guryeva, Olympics medalist. She will be a national hero. Maybe on a postage stamp. Or mobbed everywhere she goes in her homeland. We’ll do the victory lap with the super flag that I bought in 1990 and will be slightly different than the present one.