On the sidelines of the World Cadet, Junior & U21 Championships in Bielsko-Biała, three people in matching black suits posed for a photograph. Anzhelika Terliuga, silver medallist at −55 kg at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, held a pair of red and blue gloves. Stanislav Horuna held a glass trophy. Between them stood Antonio Espinós, President of the World Karate Federation, whom the two Ukrainians had come to congratulate on his birthday. "Anzhelika brought the gloves, I brought the trophy, and somehow the cake got lost on the way," Horuna wrote on Instagram, in a post shared with the Ukrainian Karate Federation.
The joke set the tone, but the post carried two serious messages. The first was gratitude. Horuna thanked Espinós "for always standing by Ukrainian karate" and wrote that this support had meant more to the country's athletes than the President probably knew, "especially in these years". Despite everything Ukraine is going through, he added, its federation, coaches and athletes keep getting stronger every season. The second message was a farewell, delivered with the lightness his fans know well: "My competitive career is over (yes, the gi has officially been replaced by a suit)."
A last gold in Salzburg
The words written in Poland closed a story whose final chapter had played out two weeks earlier in Austria. At the Karate One Series A in Salzburg, from 2 to 4 October, Horuna returned to international competition at 37, after two years without an official event, and in a weight category that had never been his. He had spent his career at −75 kg; in Salzburg he entered at −84 kg, against heavier opponents who had stayed on the circuit while he was away.
He kept winning. Round after round he worked his way through the draw, then beat Senegal's Makhtar Diop 5-0 in the semi-finals. The last final of the Series A season was an all-Ukrainian bout against Valerii Sonnykh, who trains alongside him at the Champion club in Kyiv. It ended 0-0, and Horuna was awarded the gold by hantei, the judges' decision. With Andrii Toroshanko taking one of the bronze medals, three of the four places on the −84 kg podium went to Ukraine. As he walked to the podium, the Ukrainian federation reported, Horuna laid his gloves down on the tatami, a gesture nobody in the hall needed explained.
He announced the end of his career on social media that same evening. A few days later he told the Lviv news site ZAXID.NET that, in truth, his career had ended in 2023, with the European gold won by Ukraine's men's kumite team in Guadalajara, and that he had competed only once since, at the team World Cup in 2024. Salzburg was the ending he had wanted to give himself: "I dreamed of an official full stop to my karate career. It turned out to be a bright exclamation mark" (translated from Ukrainian).
From Lviv to the Nippon Budokan
Born in Lviv, Horuna built a record that reads like a map of a decade of kumite. He won bronze at the 2014 World Championships in Bremen and the title at The World Games 2017 in Wrocław, after a final against Iran's Aliasghar Asiabari. At the 2019 European Games in Minsk he beat Azerbaijan's Rafael Aghayev 4-0 in the final, closing the bout with a kick for ippon. "I have been waiting for this moment for so long," he said that day. In 2021 he became European champion at −75 kg, in Croatia; by the following year the WKF counted five European Championships medals in his career.
Between those titles came the Olympic Games. When karate made its debut at Tokyo 2020, contested in the summer of 2021 at the Nippon Budokan, Horuna reached the semi-finals of the −75 kg event and lost there to Italy's Luigi Busà, the eventual champion. The bronze medal was his; at the same Games, Terliuga took silver at −55 kg. A year later he added a silver medal at The World Games in Birmingham.
The Karate 1-Premier League was his other home. By 2019 the WKF counted six gold medals on the circuit, and he had finished one season as its Grand Winner. A WKF profile from those years also revealed another side of him: by day he worked as a lawyer at a firm in his home town, and in the evenings he went to the gym. "My work is very different from karate," he said. "It helps me to switch my mind."
A voice for athletes
Few kumite fighters of his generation have drawn such a following. In 2019 he finished second in the vote for The World Games Athlete of the Year with some 92,000 votes, which the WKF described as the best result ever achieved by a karate athlete in that poll. Espinós said at the time that Horuna "represents – like many other karatekas do – the outstanding values of our sport", listing "honour, hard work, respect, kindness".
That standing among his peers took an institutional form in November 2021. During the World Championships in Dubai, the athletes elected him to the WKF Athletes' Commission, together with Greece's Vicky Panetsidou, from a field of seven candidates that included Ryo Kiyuna and Sajad Ganjzadeh.
The next round
Horuna has not announced any new title or position. In an interview with Sport RBC.UA, he explained that he does not want to become head coach of Ukraine's national team, a job he said would take him over completely, and that he intends to continue in several directions at once: his work within the Ukrainian Karate Federation, online coaching and seminars, and projects outside the sport. ZAXID.NET also noted that he has twice organised a tournament under his own name, the Horuna Cup, with a Lviv club.
The Instagram post points to the horizon he has chosen. Karate has been absent from the Olympic programme since Tokyo, and the WKF Executive Committee, meeting in Bielsko-Biała on 13 October, reviewed the sport's progress towards the Brisbane 2032 Games. Horuna wants to be part of that work. "Ready to roll up my sleeves and work with the WKF toward the dream of millions of karateka worldwide – bringing karate back to the Olympic Games," he wrote, before signing off with the line that closed the post: "Let's make it happen. Together."
For an athlete who left the tatami with his gloves laid at his feet and a gold medal around his neck, the suit is less a costume than a new karategi.
Sources
- Stanislav Horuna, Instagram post with the Ukrainian Karate Federation, Bielsko-Biała: https://www.instagram.com/p/DehK2bFl-iG/
- WKF, four champions crowned as the Series A season ends in Salzburg: https://www.wkf.net/news-center/article/!/3321/four-champions-crowned-as-karate-one-series-a-season-ends-in-salzburg
- Ukrainian Karate Federation, Series A Salzburg 2026 (in Ukrainian): https://karate.ua/news/seriia-a-zaltsburg-2026-proshchalnii-triumf-stasa-goruni
- Xsport.ua, Horuna announces the end of his career (in Ukrainian): https://xsport.ua/ua/karate_s/news/horuna-zavershyv-karyeru-kozhna-khorosha-istoriya-maye-sviy-kinets/
- ZAXID.NET, interview with Stanislav Horuna (in Ukrainian): https://zaxid.net/lvivskiy_olimpiyets_stanislav_goruna_zavershiv_karyeru_ta_zaynyavsya_virobnitstvom_droniv_n1647328
- Sport RBC.UA, interview with Stanislav Horuna (in Russian): https://sport.rbc.ua/ukr/othersport/tsya-robota-zabrala-mene-povnistyu-goruna-1791899802.html
- WKF, 2023 EKF Senior Championships official results: https://www.wkf.net/files/pdf/championships/continental-championshipsresultados-2023-ekf-senior-championships-001.pdf
- WKF, Stanislav Horuna, The World Games Athlete of March 2022: https://www.wkf.net/news-center/article/!/1884/stanislav-horuna-is-the-world-games-athlete-of-march-2022
- WKF, karate at the 2019 European Games in Minsk: https://www.wkf.net/news-center/article/!/1003/new-champions-amaze-as-thrilling-karate-competition-concludes-at-minsk-2019
- Olympics.com, Tokyo 2020 men's kumite −75 kg semi-final: https://stacy.olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic-games/en/results/karate/result-men-s-kumite-75kg-sfnl-000200-.htm
- Olympedia, Tokyo 2020 men's kumite −75 kg: http://www.olympedia.org/results/18000159
- Olympedia, Anzhelika Terliuha: https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/147026
- WKF, The World Games 2022 results: https://www.wkf.net/files/pdf/championships/multisport-eventsresultados-the-world-games-2022-001.pdf
- WKF, meet Stanislav Horuna: https://www.wkf.net/news-center/article/!/717/meet-stanislav-horuna-karate-celebrity-with-thousands-of-fans-around-the-world
- WKF, Horuna runner-up for The World Games Athlete of the Year 2019: https://www.wkf.net/news-center/article/!/1203/stanislav-horuna-second-best-igwa-athlete-of-the-year
- WKF, candidates to the Athletes' Commission: https://www.wkf.net/news-center/article/!/1728/list-of-candidates-to-wkf-athletes-commission-confirmed
- Inside The Games, Horuna and Panetsidou elected to the WKF Athletes' Commission: https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/karate-athletes-commission-election-vote
- WKF, Executive Committee meeting in Bielsko-Biała: https://www.wkf.net/news-center/article/!/3329/wkf-executive-committee-reviews-progress-of-karate-ahead-of-world-cadet-junior-u21-championships
Photo: wkf.net
