The 22-year-old athlete’s body was found in the Sulak River the following day.
Mikhail Abdurakhmanov, a Russian taekwondo champion and member of the national team, was found dead in the Sulak River in Dagestan.
The 22-year-old athlete’s body was discovered by the hydropower plants located near the Sulak cascade. A large group of rescuers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM), including one diver, were able to retrieve the body. According to reports, the athlete is believed to have drowned after being swept up by the powerful current.
The news was later confirmed by Ruslan Biyarslanov, the president of the taekwondo federation in Dagestan.
“Our athlete Mikail Abdurakhmanov, a member of the national taekwondo team, drowned. He was the winner of the Championship of Russia. He was a very decent, hardworking, and disciplined athlete. Our condolences to relatives and friends,” Biyarslanov stated on social media.
Abdurakhmanov death is not the first tragic incident involving combat sports athletes in recent memory. A Greco-Roman wrestling champion was murdered while attempting to defend his girlfriend from being harassed by a group of men. Russian judoka Evgeny Kushnir was killed during a fight in a cafe last week in Togliatti. Yury Vlasko, a Master of Sports in wrestling, was stabbed to death during a mass brawl in Buryatia in July 2017. An MMA fighter was jailed for 18 years for killing a weightlifter in a street-fight, while another was killed after allegedly picking a fight with a security guard.