DUSHANBE, June 21, 2012, Asia-plus — Former Tajik athlete Suhrob Khojayev has won Olympic qualification for Uzbekistan.
Suhrob Khojayev won gold in hammer throw in the qualification tournament in Kazakhstan, the 12.uz news agency reports.
We will recall that Suhrob Khojayev won silver medal for Tajikistan in the 2009 World Youth Championships in Athletics is the sixth edition of the IAAF World Youth Championships in Athletics, making a throw of 73.29 meters with 5-kilgoram hammer.
The Championships were held at Brixen-Bressanone Sport Arena in Brixen, Italy from July 8-12 2009. Athletes had to be aged 16 or 17 on December 31, 2009 (born in 1992 or 1993) to compete.
In 2001, Suhrob Khojayev was supposed to represent Tajikistan in the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore but at the last moment he was replaced by Abduqodir Barotov.
By the way, Abduqodir is currently training in Belarus and he is going to represent this country in international tournaments.
It should be noted that in Tashkent, Suhrob Khojayev has trained under direction of another former Tajik athlete Andrey Abduvaliyev.
Andrey Abduvaliyev is a former Soviet, Tajikistani, and Uzbekistani hammer thrower. He won a gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics while representing the Unified Team (the Unified Team was the name used for the sports team of the former Soviet Union (except the Baltic states) at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville and the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona). After competing for USSR he chose to represent Tajikistan when USSR was dissolved. In 1997 he changed his nationality to Uzbekistan, thus becoming one of the very few athletes to compete for three states. His second Olympic participation was in 2000 while representing Uzbekistan.
