Two Armenian athletes fail to continue at 2012 Olympics

In the long jump tournament that started on August 3 two Armenian athletes Arsen Sargsyan and Vardan Pakhlevanyan failed to qualify for the 12 best athletes admitted to the final.

Arsen Sargsyan jumped to 7.62 m and took the 25^th place out of 42 participants; and Vardan Pahlevanyan jumped to 6.84 m and finished only the 40^th. Both athletes completed their performance in London and return back to Armenia.

Earlier, 10 Armenian athletes were not able to achieve good results, and, in fact, failed with their performances at the Olympics. The failure of Armenian athletes in London is unprecedented, said Karen Mnatsakanyan, director of one of swimming schools.

"Nobody knows the reasons of the failure. It is obvious that something id wrong with the Weightlifting Federation. I'm not talking about failures in other sports, such as gymnastics or shooting, but weightlifting has always been our favourite. "Being an athlete myself, I think that our athletes were simply not ready to compete," said Karen Mnatsakanyan.

Armenia suffers from drawbacks in selection of participants for the Olympic Games, Dmitry Manukyan, a former boxer and a master of sports, gave his viewpoint.

"I think that here again, at selection of participants, the fundamental principle, which literally stands above all in our country – the nepotism – was in play. What do these failures mean? Why nobody could show normal results, while in Beijing the small Armenia won 6 bronze medals?" Dmitry Manukyan asked.