Valery Glebovich Stennikov

He went in for sambo at the age of 12 in Kurgan, and became a multiple winner and medalist of the Kurgan city and Kurgan region championships. Valery won the Junior Championship held by the Russian Guard Service “Dinamo” and sealed second in the RSFSR Championship straight after his military service.

He graduated from the Kurgan State Pedagogical Institute, and started his coaching career in 1980. As of today, he is one of the leading national and world sambo specialist. Valery raised 10 honored masters of sports, 5 world sambo champions, 8 European champions and more than 10 Russian national champions. In 2014, he was named the best coach according to the Russian Sambo Federation.

He is also the head coach of the Sverdlovsk region sambo team, the Ural Federal District team, the Russian Federation Internal Security Forces team (the Russian National Guard Security Force today). Since 2020, he has been working in UMMC Sambo Club (Verkhnyaya Pyshma), and has been General Director of UMMC Sambo Club since 2017. In the early 2000s, he pioneered a revival of renowned Sverdlovsk sambo school and went to great lengths for it to dominate both domestically and internationally.

Since 2006, the Sverdlovsk region team, coached by Valery Stennikov, has confidently won the overall team standings at the Russian Championship except for a couple of years.

Landmark achievements

• Honored Coach of Russia (1996) 
• Honorary Physical Culture Worker of the Russian Federation (2003)