MHSN

you are right partially but it's not exactly like that for non-athletes they can't even ask for visa, will be rejected immediately but it doesn't mean that athletes can get their visa smoothly, hell no. they usually reject half of the team for no reason just to show they can do that. and that was even before the orange baboon, obviously I don't expect things to get better with the current administration. USA Wrestling guys are nice and respectful, I'm sure they will work hard to prevent that. but well it's not up to them. again 2 years is a long time. lots of things can change. we will see.

everybody knew this for couple of months but UWW officially confirmed that Bahrain will host the 2026 World Championships. if I'm not wrong Slovakia was the other candidate but I assume the UWW won't host major senior competitions inside the Schengen area until Sadulaev's ban expires. it's also almost a sure thing that Las Vegas will host the 2027 Worlds (which is also the main Olympic Qualifier) which is a terrible news for our team two years is a long time though. Vegas will host the 2026 U23 Worlds too, we will see how they will deal with the visa thing one year before the senior event. another important thing is that they also moved the dates for the next year Worlds, it was supposed to be in early September but now it listed in UWW website from 24 October to 1 November it probably has something to do with the Asian Games in late September. but I think this is even worse having the AG before the Worlds. will be a tough decision for our federation, is it wise to send the A team to both events ? will we see Japanese top wrestlers in this home Asian Games ? most of them wanted to participate but now this will ruin their World Champs chance. it's easier to go the Worlds first and then recover your body for AG (which is a mini tournament with few very good wrestlers in each weight)

I think I can live with 1 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze , even though Abazari losing the last final with the smallest possible margin hurt big time, it was 2-2 (without senshou), again even 2-2 on Hantei from the side refs but then the center ref decided the winner. Atousa Golshadnejad became the first Iranian woman to win the world title in Karate and she really deserved it. I think our karate was cursed since 2021, lots of bad/terrible things happened since then, doping, career-ending injuries, missing 2021 Worlds for mysterious reasons ... hopefully this gold medal lifts the curse finally

only few years ago having only 2 finalists would be considered disappointing but considering the current poor state of our Karate (specially the men's team), I think we have to be satisfied with 2 in gold medal match and 1 in bronze medal match. let's see what they can do tomorrow, I will be happy if they end up with 2 golds and 1 bronze

The OCA officially asked the organizers to add Padel and Teqball to the 2026 Asian Games https://oca.asia/media/attachments/memberships_subcommittee/5/Decisions_102nd_OCA_EB_Meeting_4_79URSwt.pdf so sports can just born and get into the Asian Games right away ? it seems Teqball is going to be the next Jujitsu, apparently paying some money to OCA officials to include them in all OCA multi-sport events from now on

the inevitable happened today morning, Saber passed away

there is something weird in this Asian Games program which I didn't notice earlier, in weightlifting they are not going to award medals for the total! but two set of medals for Snatch and C&J ! they tried this format for the Asian Youth Games and the outcome wasn't great. everybody wanted to lift 1kg more than the previous guy! to me that was bad and damaged the competition anyway technically there will be 32 events in weightlifting, instead of 16.

that's not correct, his dad and his uncle went to Qatar couple of days after the accident and had been with him the whole time. but they were upset that the Qatari hospital didn't give them his medical records, they wanted to consult with better doctors in Iran about his chances. eventually they had to transfer him back to Iran in a desperate move to maybe save him. he is in Tehran now, still breathing with life-support btw our volleyball federation is now somehow ignoring its initial report about being braindead (without really rejecting it) and now acting like there is a chance he can recover. asking people to pray for him etc I'm afraid it's obvious that the yesterday news was correct, but his family just doesn't want to believe it and let him go, the IRIVF just plays along to not hurt them more, giving them more time to accept the tragic reality in time. I wish I'm wrong though but I know I'm not.

it was really fun following/watching the Asian Youth Games in past 10 days. the TV coverage was good enough for such youth level event. most Asian countries took it almost seriously, what a pity Japan and South Korea didn't I mean they had their top athletes in some sports but not all of them, Japan specially had a limited number of athletes in few sports. Iran sent a relatively big delegation (Bahrain is just next door) and did OK, finishing 4th in medal table both in term of number of medals and number of gold medals. also really happy with our girls' performance, winning more or less the same number of medals as boys and even outscored them heavily in certain sports. the girls did actually better overall if it wasn't for wrestling (which is a men's only sport here unfortunately) winning gold medals in girls' handball and girls' volleyball was quite unexpected. great results considering all limitations and restrictions girls are facing here. btw all of a sudden we had 3 girls in boxing, this is somehow debut of Iran in international women's boxing. this leaves wrestling as the only men's only sport here. hopefully that changes soon.

Saber Kazemi former/current national volleyball team player, 2021 Olympian and 2021 Asian Championship MVP announced braindead today at the age of just 26 some mysterious accident happened to him in Qatar where he was playing professionally (apparently being electrocuted while entering a hotel pool) resulting in a heart attack. he was comatose for couple of weeks, still nobody really knows what happened to him in Qatar and the Qatari police doesn't try to help. this somehow becomes a national tragedy. his health condition was on top of the news this whole time. he was a nice kid, such a sad story

this tournament was about to become a total disaster but Zandi saved the day with his gold medal today. good tournament for him, winning the gold without losing a single round. still a very very poor tournament overall with only 2 medals with 1 day left. I think our federation celebrated too much after the Olympic success (4 medals out of 4 athletes) if I'm not wrong our athletes only participated in one international tournament since Paris. sometimes winning can be negative and that's exactly what happened to our Taekwondo after Paris. the federation president (former Olympic Champion Hadi Saei) got too much confident and appointed his own sister as the women's team head coach which is a complete disaster here. they are losing to anybody random in Wuxi. I believe our men's team is still strong, but lack of competition was costly, they lost their sharpness, Salimi, Barkhordari and Yazdani lost matches they could won. specially Salimi, he lost to someone he can eat for the breakfast.

IWF has a terrible team ranking system, which nobody cares about (except the Iranians ) for winning the team title you don't need lots of medals, you just need a full team of average weightlifters and they have to be careful not bombing out. our WL federation is now considering winning this stupid team title as a huge huge achievement. and they are selling it pretty well to our media and our sport officials. unfortunately traditionally we just care too much about team ranking in individual sports. I assume nobody else in the world cares about that. in most sports caring about the team ranking doesn't affect your performance, you try your best to win as many medals as possible anyway but it's a different story in weightlifting, it makes our coaches very cautious , their #1 priority is not bombing out, our first attempts are always very conservative last night was an exception, they were already sure about the team title and let Davoudi lift whatever he wants and he just bombed out while he only needed something 20kg lighter to win the bronze . (it was the Korean's lucky day to win that bronze) so while our WL federation is celebrating it like a big big win, it was a below average tournament for Iran winning only 2 silver medals. we don't have big stars in our team anymore, days of likes of Salimi, Rezazadeh, Moradi, Rostami (not this version of him) are over. but the glass wasn't completely empty Nassiri and Moeini did great here, they weren't expected to medal.

Really glad with Moeini's performance, beating Nasar in Snatch and breaking the WR is something to remember for him. he wasn't expected to win a medal in total but did much better than expectations but on the other hand, once again our coaches threw away another medal with their stupid decisions. Aalipour was supposed to finish 2nd behind Nasar but finished 4th with some strange attempts. Iran is probably the only county in the world that still cares about the team ranking therefore not bombing out and collecting team points is always the #1 priority for our coaches. they always sacrifice one attempt to make sure the guy doesn't bomb out. and that cost our weightlifters so many medals so far.

Apparently Messo Hassona picked up an injury but in this sport you always can doubt these kind of news the whole Venezuelan team including Vallenilla withdrew from the competition, I assume this has something to do with the current political tension there. but at least about Davitadze we can say this for certain , he just received a 4 years ban from CAS few days ago. looks like Georgians tried to get away from a positive test from couple years ago but WADA/CAS blocked their escape way. so the stage is set for the Kosovar hero to beat Karlos and win the gold I wonder how he even found Kosovo?! I assume he put up an ad on a hiring website, something like: I'm an ex Olympic Champion, I'm super arrogant, I coach myself, I don't give a shit about anything else, I'm The God of weightlifting.

Having groups of 3 teams is a terrible terrible idea for several reasons, specially in football because it matters a lot to have 3 days rest or 6 days rest between matches FIFA could simply award the quota to Qatar and KSA. it's more or less the same, they are the host and they play the 1st and 3rd matches in these playoff groups. I know they announced the format long time ago but I think (and to be honest I'm pretty sure) they had certain teams in mind when they made up this terrible format. and exactly those 2 certain teams failed to qualify directly and needed a little help from FIFA to give them handicap for this round. It's unlikely but I still hope Iraq and UAE do something in the last matchday and surprise FIFA.