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Shota Khabareli is from Tbilisi, Georgia (Former USSR). When he was 21 years old, he won the Gold Medal at the 1980 Olympics Games in Moscow, USSR. He beat Juan Ferrer (CUB) in the final to grab the title. Other than being an Olympic Champion, Khabarelli was a many times European medalist, and won a Bronze medal in 1983 World Championships in Moscow, USSR.
Watching him fight, is a very interesting expereince. Unfortunately, I only saw him fight on the video footage from the Olympic final. But he would always go for the feet, and his achiwaza was incredible. He was constantly dangerous with all sorts of foot tecniques like ouchi-gair, and kouchi-gari (a throw he scored yuko with against Ferrer (CUB) in the Olympic final.
As noted earlir, Shota Khabarelli was very successful in international competitions, but interestingly he was never a champion of Soviet Union.
Currently, Shota Khabarelli is the head coach of Georgian National judo team. |
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Today Shota Khabarelli is mostly rememberd for the KHABARELLI PICKUP. The technique that he used numerously throught his career, and that was recongnized as a technique by IJF and named after him. In my opinion this pickup is one ofthe most beautiful throws in all of judo. When done properly, the result is inequivocal ippon. As I noted earlier, a lot of throws from the Georgian judo tradition coe from their background in Chidaoba - the Georgian folk wrestling style. So, I think in this case this technique ows its origins to Chidaoba. This technique was first introduced to the world by the great champion, a first soviet judo player to become an Olympic Champion - Shota Chochishvili. He won the Olympic title in 1972 in under 93 kg category. Chochishvili was also bronze medalist in Olympic Games in 1976, and numerous World and European medalist. It was Khabarelli however who made this technique popular, and that is why it was named after him. |
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