Learn Turkish: Usta, şampiyonluğun uğruna her gün antrenman yapıyor. - The master trains every day for the sake of the championship.

The postposition uğruna (for the sake of) typically requires the noun or pronoun before it to be in the genitive case. To link to uğruna, the noun şampiyonluk (championship) takes the genitive suffix -un, and its final k softens to a ğ.

Is it possible to drop the genitive suffix and just say şampiyonluk uğruna?

Yes, and it changes the nuance. Using the genitive makes the noun specific: şampiyonluğun uğruna means for the sake of the specific championship they are aiming for. If you use the bare noun (şampiyonluk uğruna), it acts as an indefinite noun compound, meaning for the sake of a championship or winning in a general sense.

Where does the word uğruna actually come from?

It is built from the noun uğur (luck, omen, or sake). It takes the third-person possessive suffix -u (which causes the second vowel in the root to drop, leaving uğru), followed by the buffer letter -n- and the dative suffix -a. Literally, the grammatical structure translates to "to its sake."

Could we just use için instead of uğruna in this sentence?