It may have gone little noticed locally, but for two days last week Macao was one of the centres of the Sambo world.
For the uninitiated, Sambo is a brutal martial art of Russian origins, and the Asia and Oceania Sambo Championships were held at the Macao Forum stadium on June 29 and 30
Athletes from 20 countries took part in 28 weight categories across women’s and men’s divisions. Kazakhstan topped the final table with 26 medals, with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in second and third places respectively. Good results were also achieved by South Korea, India and the Philippines.
[See more: Why is Macao so good at Wushu?]
“This year we managed to take another step forward in the development and popularisation of SAMBO by holding the Asia and Oceania Championships in Macao,” said the head of the Sambo Union of Asia and Oceania, Alamjon Mullaev.
“I am very glad that the tournament was held at [such] a high organisational level.”
Sambo was developed by the Soviet Red Army in the 1920s as a means of hand to hand fighting. The name is an acronym of the Russian samozashchita bez oruzhiya, which means “self-defence without weapons.”
