Quick Facts
Biography
Grigory Aleksandrovich Gamarnik (also Hryhoriy Oleksandrovych Hamarnik; original name: Григорий Александрович Гамарник; born April 22, 1929) is a former Soviet world champion wrestler.
Biography
Gamarnik is Jewish, and was born in Zinovievsk (today's Kropyvnytskyi), Ukraine, in the Soviet Union. He was trained by USSR wrestling trainer German Sandler.
Wrestling career
In 1948, he won second place in light middleweight class wrestling, at the All-Union Youth Contests in the USSR.
Gamarnik was world lightweight (67 kg) Greco-Roman wrestling champion at the 1955 World Wrestling Championships in Karlsruhe, Germany, beating out silver medalist Kyösti Lehtonen of Finland and bronze medalist Gustav Freij of Sweden. He came in second in the 1958 World Wrestling Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in welterweight (73 kg) Greco-Roman wrestling, behind gold medalist Kazim Ayvaz of Turkey and ahead of bronze medalist Valeriu Bularca of Romania.
He came in fifth in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, in men's welterweight Greco-Roman wrestling. He was also a USSR wrestling champion in 1953, and in 1956–58.