Judoists from Turkmenistan have begun the final stage of preparation for the main start of the four–year anniversary - the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. The games will be held from July 26 to August 11.

Currently, the training process for Turkmen athletes is taking place in the Croatian city of Porec.

Here, the Turkmen national team, led by head coach Kazuhiko Tokuno and senior coach Tatyana Vidyasova, will hold intensive training sessions until June 29. After that, the representatives of the national team will go to Spain for training.

In accordance with the results shown by the athletes this season, Serdar Rakhimov will go to the 2024 Olympic Games for men in the weight category up to 66 kg. The women's coveted ticket to the 2024 Games was won by: up to 57 kg - Maysa Pardayeva.

It is important to note that other judoists of the national team of Turkmenistan Hekim Agamammedov (66 kg) and Zulkhumar Dashkinova (63 kg) are also present at the training camp in Croatia. They are sparring partners of Rakhimov and Pardayeva, respectively.

Serdar Rakhimov is 20 years old. He first made people talk about himself in 2023, when he won silver at the European Open Championship in Rome, then won a gold medal at the Junior European Cup in Sarajevo and became a silver medalist at the Junior Asian Cup in Tashkent.

This year, he was awarded silver medals at the European Open Tournament in Warsaw (Poland) and the European Cup in Riga (Latvia). And in May, he won the first gold for Turkmenistan in judo at Grand Slam tournaments, becoming the winner of the Dushanbe Grand Slam 2024.

19-year-old Maisa Pardayeva first came to the attention in 2022, when she won the Junior Asian Cup in Almaty. In 2023, she repeated the same success at competitions in Tashkent.

In 2023, this talented judoka was also awarded silver at the European Junior Cup 2023 in Sarajevo, bronze at the Asian Open Tournament in Kuwait and at the XIX Asian Summer Games in Hangzhou. In March 2024, she became the bronze medalist of the Grand Slam in Antalya.