Hundreds of spectators from Koforidua and its nearby towns defied last Saturday’s downpour and converged at the Jackson Park to witness the crowning of the best armwrestler in the region.

A heavy rainfall meant that the event started nearly three hours later than scheduled but that did not discourage the determined men and women who wanted to catch glimpses of the fastest growing sporting discipline in the country.

As evidenced in the previous editions held in Tarkwa and Sunyani, the Eastern Armwrestling Challenge saw a combination of sports and entertainment with comedian Baba Spirit exciting the crowd with some hilarious jokes and dance moves.

Derrick Kwakye once again proved his mettle as the face of Ghana armwrestling currently by overpowering Mark Antwi popularly referred to as Punisher of Kejetia vs Makola fame and former champion Haruna Tahiru to win the giant trophy in the Champion of Champions category.

Yasmin Kadri won a gold medal for coming first in the female category with Victoria Zatey and Rose Avanyo winning silver and bronze medals resp respectively.

The vice president of the Ghana Armwrestling Federation, Kofi Addo-Agyekum described the programme as successful one that will enable the coaches of the national team identify new talents.

“We are doing this to pull together a team for the country. As we speak between the month of June and July we have a continental tournament in Mali. So we are doing this in every region to get the best talents to help win laurels for the country. We have been in the Western Region and we are here today. We’ll be in all the regions to pull resources together and solidify the team we are sending to the tournament”, he said.

The Brand’s Manager of Eagle Extra Stout John Baptist Akado stated “when we launched the project, we searched around for a sporting discipline that is discipline enough and will help us push our product and we realized that GAF is one of the few sporting disciplines that is well organized and for us in the cooperate world we like organizations which are very disciplined so we approached them in 2018 and I must it has been a successful union so far”.

The event was also graced by the Municipal Chief Executive for New Juaben South Isaac Appau Gyasi, the Executive Secretary of Ghana Free Zones Board, Michael Okyere Baafi as well some senior journalists.



Below is the full list of winners

Female

Gold - Yasmin Kadri

Silver - Victoria Zatey

Bronze - Rose Avanyo

Men Under 60kg

Gold - Eliot Lamptey

Silver - Listowel Sampah

Men 70kg

Gold - Isaac Nii Amugi

Silver - Richard Tanye

Men 90kg

Edward Asamoah

Francis Adamavi

Issa Kunya

Men 100+ Kg

Gold - Derrick Kwakye

Silver - Mark Antwi

Bronze - Haruna Tahiru

CHAMPION OF CHAMPIONS

Derrick Kwakye