Hrachya Rostomyan, Head of the Armenian Olympic Delegation to 1st European Games hosted in Baku, in the coming days, will call a press conference to detail the level of security of Armenians during the days of the Games, and the attendance of the athletes. However, NOC Secretary-General, in some sense, to some extent ceded our persistence and briefly responded to some of the several questions raised by “Aravot”.
– Mr. Rostomyan, are you generally satisfied with the results of our athletes in Azerbaijan?
– We went to Baku and returned with our heads high. The Armenian tricolor flag was raised by Greco-Roman wrestler Mihran Harutyunyan and several of our athletes are very close to going up on the podium.
– They were close, but they did not go up. What was the reason? Was it the refereeing?
– There was no strongly emphasized biased refereeing against us as such. Although, there happened errors and omissions. But this is not new in sports and happens everywhere. Perhaps, the only exception was boxing. In fact, all countries were dissatisfied, including Russia. But there too, the refereeing was conducted by the recently adopted new rules, in which there is much complicated and unclear. And most interestingly, even the experts did not know much about it and were interpreting the same thing in different ways. The computer was determining the winner. The side referees were pressing the red or blue button at the end of competition, and the final decision was made by the computer, by obscure principle of selecting three of the five votes of the referees, which often did not comply with the true depiction of the competition. Well, prior to some of our boxing fights, I have turned to the EOC President, Patrick Hickey, to be attentive. But nothing can be done against the computer.
– What will you say about the wrestling?
– What I said in the beginning. Certainly, there were referee errors and omissions. But there was almost no particularly pronounced work against our people, either they were few, or they were not decisive on the outcome of the match. Should our wrestlers be a bit more self-confident and work more correct and efficiently on the rug, they could have achieved higher results. And now, please, let’s wrap up. Probably, next week, we will call a press-conference, we will provide the details and will answer all the questions raised by the journalists.
Ashot HAKOBYAN, “Aravot” daily
