Triple World Champion Alexander Mikhailin new head coach of Egypt

Russian judoka Alexander Mikhailin will become the new head coach of Egypt. The Olympic silver medallist of the 2012 London Olympic Games will arrive this week in Egypt to start his work.

Mikhailin is a big name in judo and he is a triple World Champion. Mikhailin won the double in 2001 in Munich when he captured both the world title in the plus category as in the open category a few days later. In 2005 he regained the heavyweight world title in Cairo, also in Egypt.

In total Mikhailin collected seven World Championships medals, for the first time in 1999 in Birmingham taking bronze and he competed until the 2012 Olympic Games.

Mikhailin captured six European titles from 2001-2012. The tall Russian win eleven medals and he won 10 European and World medals with the Russian team including two European titles and the World team title in 2012, right after the Olympic Games where he took silver in a final against Reddy Riner.

After he quit judo he relaunched his career to try to qualify for the Olympic Games in 2016 and even 2020 but never seriously competed with the new generation. He won his last World Cup event in 2018 in Sofia (at the age of 38) and won in total 17 World Cups including Grand Slams in Moscow and Tokyo.

The 42-year old heavyweight fought against all major heavyweights of the world. He fought most international contests against Janusz Wojnarowicz (POL) and former World Champion Dennis van der Geest. He battled with many Olympic champions such as Riner, Tuvshinbayar Naidan, Kosei Inoue, Antal Kovács, Ihar Makarau and world champion such as Van der Geest, Yasuyuki Muneta, Abdullo Tangriev, Maxim Rakov and Gu-ham Cho as he competed in both U100kg as +100kg weight classes.

Egypt have some players in the top 40 of the World Ranking such as Abdelrahman Mohammed, Ramadan Darwish, Ahmed Abdelrahman, Mohamed Abdelmawgoud, Mohamed Abdelaal and Mohamed Mohyeldin. Mikhailini fought against Egyptian frontrunners Bassel El Gharbawy and Islam El Shehaby, both multiple continental champion.