iran2016

I assume this is one of the biggest surprises ever in this sport 
 
World #1  Wang Chuqin lost to 14 years old  Benyamin Faraji at the Asian Championships today.  China still survived the team match 3-1
(OK I know Wang is not playing well recently but still)
 
ps: it's unbelievable but Iran actually had a chance to do the impossible and beat China, Noshad was competitive in both of his matches against Lin Shidong and Wang Chuqin.

Some of these changes you guys would make to the Olympic program are making me glad that none of you are IOC members  (on the other hand though, I do agree with some of them…)
 
I’ll share my thoughts later. 

1. Rate the performance on a scale of 1-10
 
7 maybe, 7.5
the number of medals were good, much better than my expectations plus 2 medals for women for the first time was great
 
but we lost 4-5 more gold medals wrestling because of some small/stupid mistakes. 
also winning medals in only 2 sports is a very bad sign
 
2. What were the suprises and heartbreaks ?
 
Taekwondo 4 out of 4 with 100% medal success was a huge surprise. we knew they are all good enough but our taekwondo always underperformed massively in Olympics so the expectations were quite low this time.
 
losing 3 finals in freestyle wrestling was really sad. Amouzad lost to a good wrestler but other two gold medals were 99% guaranteed before the final
Yazdani's injury in the final was the most heartbreaking moment, not in this Olympics but all time.  looks like the universe doesn't want him to win the 2nd gold medal. he tried to win the final with just 1 hand and almost managed to pull a miracle for 5 minutes. he dislocated his shoulder 4 times in the final 
and again while we were recovering from that, we had another heartbreaking moment the next day with Zare losing to someone he could beat 10-0 any day.
 
3.Was your country's goal achieved? 
 
They never set a goal, this way they can consider any result as success 
 
4. Which are the sports that will be invested more in future? Current / Upcoming sports
 
This is really sad that we are winning medals (even though lots of medals) in only 2 sports. right now I don't think there is any money to invest in something else. but personally I like to see more investment in Shooting, Archery, Athletics, Gymnastics, Canoeing and few more sports
while we have talents in Judo and Boxing, not sure if they worth wasting money on. 
 
5. Who could be some the potential star for your country in LA?
 
I don't want to name any athlete, I know we have lots of talents in our main 3 sports. (actually 2, weightlifting is half dead) who knows what will happen in 4 years time. 2 of our gold medalists are 19 or 20. nobody knew them 2 years ago. 
even our top wrestlers may lose their spot to a youngster. 

leaving the freestyle (which is the dominant style here) without gold medal is very very disappointing, 
 
for years and years Iran and USA were the best freestyle teams in the world behind Russia and now without Russia (well half of the FS medalists are still Russian!), both of them failed to win a single gold! and both had strong teams on paper 
 
8 medals out of 11 wrestlers in 12 events is nothing to be sorry about. that's great result but losing 4 very very winnable finals suck big time. not sure why all of our finalists (except one) underperformed massively in the 2nd day. celebrating too much maybe ?  we seriously had a shot for 4 freestyle golds but lost them all for different reasons, Yazdani's injury, Amouzad's terrible gameplan, Zare's stupid mistake etc.
 
 
anyway it was a great week of wrestling, while it hurt sometimes but still I enjoyed every single minute of it. 
 
even though you can't have a complete wrestling competition without Russia. on the positive note, this time we had less officiating problems. I only witnessed one big big robbery in MFS 74kg (that couldn't be just a mistake, that was intentional)
 

not in a celebration mood because of what happened in other sports, but this is Iran's first gold medal in this sport in 16 years and we have to thank some very special organization for this. the UK government !
 
few months ago for the last ranking tournament (GP final), the UK denied visa for the entire Iranian team. our 58kg guy Haji-Mousaei was VERY close to the quota but lost it because of that. the WT did nothing about it, just giving some promises about this won't happen again. 
 
with max 2 quotas per country rule , if Iran had won that quota, we wouldn't be able to send anybody to the Asian qualifiers. our TKD federation had a tough decision to make about who to send to the AQT. they picked up +80kg (and not 58kg)
 
and, Arian Salimi, the +80kg guy won the gold tonight, ironically beating a British fighter in the final. (while the rest of the British team went home empty handed)
 
pure justice, isn't it ?

it will remain as the worst Olympic moment in our history . Yazdani is not just an ordinary athlete. It will take a lot of time to forget this match, it's impossible to describe the feeling, that's more than just heartbreaking. 
 
he was recovering from a shoulder surgery, apparently something happened to him last night. that was stupid to wrestle. he should withdrew before the start. he wrestled with just one hand and probably re-injured himself very badly, it might be the last match of his career. 
 
pfff, even 5 more gold medals (the number of our remaining athletes) won't make up for this. I really don't know if I want to continue watching the next two days, as I'm sure this will affect the rest of the team badly. this is 2012 all over again, that time another Yazdani got injured seriously after beating his only rival and a good Olympic ended up very sad. 
 
that was nice of Ramazanov to not celebrate though

Very sad to see Yazdani getting an injury into the final. No one wants to win this way. Can't really feel happy for this win, as we know he wasn't a 100%. 
 
 

by winning the world title and now the Olympic silver Kiani is the most decorated female athlete here
 
but she won her most important medal of her career in a below average day. she just had few moments of magic in her first and second matches and the SF against the Lebanese girl was easy and she didn't exist in the final. her real medal match was in the first round against Alizadeh, I was worried it will be copy/paste of 2021 nightmare but she somehow managed to win by a last second headkick in the 3rd round.
 
I don't like Alizadeh but this little investment worked out for Bulgaria with a bronze , that's OK as long as she stood one step below the Iranian athlete on the podium. 
 
 

Our winning streak in wrestling hall since yesterday finally came to an end, that was disappointing because Mohmadi could do MUCH better. he just count on the refs to give the other guy the 2nd caution and he can turn Novikov in parterre (as he usually does) I can't say the call was wrong, but they usually don't caution one wrestler twice in a situation like this. but we got some 50/50 calls in past couple of days and I knew we used our "luck quota" already 
 
have to say Esmaeili was also very bad today, he somehow found a way to win the gold but he was just a shadow of yesterday guy. I think our Greco team celebrated too much last night  
 
still 2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze is a very good result for a 6-man Greco team. the 2nd best result in history after London 2012 dream team. it could be better for sure but let's not get greedy  
 
it's time for the freestyle team to live up to the expectations. I just hope they won't ruin the last days of the Olympics 

congrats to Indonesia and Leonardo 
 
really proud of Alipour, he was our last medal chance outside of those 3 big sports,  and he gave his best. I didn't even know he is capable of 4.XX run. he deserved a medal but just lost to better athletes. 
 
If I had to pick one athlete before the Games to win a medal. that would be him. it feels bad he didn't medal, but yet I'm also happy because of his great performance. 

oof, what a day, what a day ! our guys took down 3 Olympic Champions to make it a perfect day. 
 
but have to say Esmaeili gave everybody a heart attack, not once but twice  when the ref below the whistle the first time it was like the whole world is falling but then a desperate challenge showed the Armenian was completely outside of mat before pinning him. and then few seconds later bang another near fall situation. that would be devastating to lose a match like that against someone much much weaker than yourself. the gold is his to lose now.
 
but Saravi was the man of the day by beating the great Aleksanyan finally , after losing to him 3 times. 

Lopez is simply unbeatable. he is just not human, I knew nobody can beat him but still tried to be positive and gave Mirzazadeh some chances to challenge him and I think he tried his best. that's the best you can do against Lopez. nobody even scored against Lopez since 2008 at the Olympics!
 
Lopez knew he already won the gold after beating his only possible opponent, that's why he was happy after the win. SF and final will be too easy for him. 
 
Lopez lost 3 matches since 2005 and everybody knew he lost on purpose, he never really lost a match since 2004 QF vs Baroev which he lost narrowly. he is surely the best Greco wrestler all time and he confirmed it once again. I won't be surprised if he tries his luck again in LA. he is not human after all. 
 
both of our wrestlers today simply lost to better wrestlers, no complain but still it feels bad to lose again, even in our favorite sport  I hope Mirza wins the bronze tomorrow which I think he will (probably easily) we badly need a medal of any color. 
 
 

well, blowing up 8pts lead mostly against the reserve guy. this will be really hard to swallow. 
 
2021 Tokyo quarterfinal and now this. if I remember correctly we always had problems with this evil Bulgarian ref. never mind, what's done is done
 
 
not sure if they can pull it together for the bronze medal match, which will be another uphill task against the refs. I expect a big loss, it's near impossible to come back from this. looks like another 4th place in fencing and we have to wait another week for a medal. 
 

Babulfath certainly inherited something from her father because protesting to the referee is simply in our blood  but that was too much, she was really lucky to not get DQed.
 
btw what a talented kid 

We are only few hours away from a catastrophe , probably one of the worst in the very long history of this country.
 
after the lowest turnout ever in the first round, things don't look better for the runoff, of course there is no reliable poll and I'm still hoping for a surprise when I wake up Saturday morning but it doesn't feel like that. this time it's not about just one "bad guy" but a very dangerous cult with weird delusional apocalyptic idea.

after 15 defeats in a row (7 last year, 8 this year) Iran finally managed to win a match in VNL, surprisingly against the USA ! (also broke the 5th set curse) 
 
while it doesn't change anything competition-wise, that was a must needed win for their confidence, that would be the end of our volleyball program if we finished this with 12 defeats. now there is some hope that our team isn't that shit. 
 
and to be honest I think if they could pick up a win in the first week, they could be still fighting for the quota. 

Finally  after losing 6 quota matches already in different events. Fallah herself was involved in 4 of those losing quota matches. 

The freestyle competition is done, it's easy to calculate the Olympic seeding now
 
Hassan Yazdani had a pretty comfortable comeback to the mat, beating all of his 4 opponents by 10pts margin  his shoulder looked OK and with this performance he earned his spot on the Olympic team. I'm pretty sure his performance made lots of people happy here. without Taylor he will be favorite for the gold in Paris.

ooof
we can't beat even this young Bulgarian team
 
hard to believe what happened to this team in such a short time, two years ago things were completely different but a couple of bad decisions led us to this situation
 
14th VNL defeat in a row
18th defeat in a row against non-Asian teams
20th defeat in a row against top 20 in the world
9th tie-break defeat in a row
 
those stats are unbelievably bad 
 
they are just getting comfortable with losing. no matter who is the opponent. 

so Mehdi Parvizi (I didn't even know him until a week ago) is the last chance to save the face of this sport, otherwise it will be first time in qualification era to have no boxer in the Olympics
 
One of the commentators said he calls the Iranians as "fighters" not boxers, I think that pretty much sums up everything about our boxers   guys like Gheshlaghi are very fun to watch but they don't get results because they don't land most of their punches.
 
I'm only upset about Habibinejad , he had a relatively easy draw, didn't saw his bout but apparently he gassed in the 3rd round. he participated in a high level tournament in Kazakhstan a week before this competition (and won the gold) that was a big mistake and cost him the Olympics. 

no surprise Nima won the match (not really a match, just some warming up) 4-1 to qualify
 
and  Neda Shahsavari won the women's quota beating Mirkadirova 4-3 in a very close match. she will be the first Iranian woman to participate in 3 Olympics ! 2012, 2016 and now 2024.

Finals
 
Men:  Noshad Alamian vs  Nima Alamian
Women:  Shahsavari vs  Mirkadirova
 
I assume Noshad will let his younger brother take the quota. he is very safe in the ranking. 99% guaranteed the quota. Nima started the tournament with a 4-0 defeat but luckily survived the group stage and beat #1 seed Gerassimenko 

That was really hard to watch  it sucks that we are this weak in one of the Olympic weights and they tried different guys and each one was worse than the previous one. I would send a different wrestler than Sarlak but the outcome was most probably the same, failure.
 
this is only the 2nd time in history that we fail to qualify a full freestyle team. and the first time (back in 1996) was only because someone failed the weight-in.

Liang Jingkun and  Lin Gaoyuan are out in Saudi Smash in round of 16!!
 
Sensational wins for  Noshad Alamiyan and  Jonathan Groth.

That is awfully a lot. Looks like this whole idea got out of control a bit…