DOB - 25 March 1958
COUNTRY - LATVIA (represented SOVIET UNION)
WEIGHT - U86kg

Favourite Techniques

Osoto-gari
Tai-otoshi
Ashi-waza
Juji-gatame

Alexander Iatskevich was born in Dobele, Latvia. His father was an officer in a tank division and his mother a German teacher. In 1970, aged 12, his father was transferred to the capital, Riga and so he began looking for a new sport. Having previously played both football and hockey, this time he wanted an individual sport and so applied to join the local Sambo class.

From the outset Iatskevich learned that the sport was only for those that meant business. The professional nature of sambo in the USSR meant that from the very start the emphasis was on weeding out the weak so as the keep only the cream. As such, training sessions were hard. Iatskevich remembers how in the opening weeks of training, they did little technical work and were instead made to do gruelling drills of push ups and pull ups. Within a week over half of the class had quit.

In 1972, Iatskevich watched a Sambo tournament that would change his life. It was a tournament in Riga, but this time two judoka were competing. Nobuyuki Sato and Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki. Both won gold. Iatskevich was particularly impressed by the way Sato threw with Tai- otoshi.

Iatskevich became convinced from that moment onwards that there was something special about judo. His coach, who also felt the same way, changed his club’s name from the Dynamo Sambo club to the Dynamo Judo Club in 1973. It was at this point that Iatskevic began calling himself a Judo player rather than a Sambo player. In 1974, he won selection for the national under 18s squad and won the European espoir Championships in Turkey the next year, using predominantly tachi-waza.

However, despite his new found love of judo techniques, he found that the tough Sambo training and gripping that he had learnt as a teenager gave him a distinct advantage over other European competitors. He also quickly learned that Russian Sambo training gave him another advantage in the form of his ability to use armlocks. In fact, despite his coach telling him his ne-waza was weak and sending him to Moscow to train with Olympic bronze medallist Oleg Stepanov to improve it, Iatskevich was fast gaining a reputation on the International Judo scene as a dangerous Kansetsu –waza specialist. He states,

“Frankly, very few people get armlocked at the top level of Sambo. I found out soon that although I could use armlocks relatively easily in International competition, and I got a reputation for being dangerous on the ground, I could never use them in competitions in the Soviet Union. I just had to throw my opponent’s. That was Soviet Sambo training”.

In 1978, Iatskevich fought in le Tournoi de Paris, eventually beating Sekii Nose of Japan in the final with an armlock after throwing him five or six times. The same year he won the European Championships, beating Detlef Ultsch, all be it this time in a much more hard fought contest against an opponent more familiar with the Russian judo style. The next year he won again, throwing Peter Seisenbacher with Osoto-gari from a Russian grip before armlocking him in the final. This proved a good warm up for the Olympic Games in 1980, where Iatskevich was the favourite. However, he suffered a major upset, losing in the semi-final to an opponent he had previously beaten easily. Still he managed to win his bronze medal contest with another armlock.

After a year out with a back problem, Iatskevich returned in 1982 to take another European title. However, after the decision of the Soviet Union to boycott the Los Angeles Olympics, he retired at the age of 26.