MHSN

interesting news, Russia replaced two Olympic champions Vlasov and Chakvetadze very late . https://unitedworldwrestling.org/article/chekhirkin-replace-vlasov-european-og-qualifier I wonder what's the reason behind this ... injury or doping ? there is no other way to explain this

oh man, what a drama. I'm happy for Portugal but that was a VERY cruel way for Croatia to lose the quota. France had 3 goals lead in last 4-5 minutes ...

if Norway plays normal and beat Korea Chile needs a +4 goals win to qualify. the good news is they already have that ! the bad news is Brazil still has 45 minutes to make up for the terrible start.

I think Canada qualified only 1 player for the singles competition. the other guy in mixed doubles doesn't count.

Samsonov withdrew. not sure if he was really injured or he was sure about the qualification via the World Ranking. btw with both Indian players out already, it's a sure thing that India will qualify 2 in Asia. one of them as the South Asia rep. and the other one as the best runner-up.

not sure what happened between Day 1 and Day 2 but after a very disappointing first day, Iranians won almost all of their matches today, 3 (out of 4) made to the Gold medal match. good start for the sport of Karate after a long long break. hopefully they can continue other K1 events like this (specially that one in Portugal as the last ranking event)

just for info, 2 months ago France and Portugal were exactly in the same position. that was Norway in World Championship, now it's Croatia. 2 months ago France played fair and serious and helped Norway advance to the QF. even though Portugal is a pretty good team, they are capable of beating a full squad motivated France as they did in Euro.

by taking a quick look at the entries , I think these guys are my candidates to qualify. top 2 and 2 next best guys. this is only in freestyle. it was just hard for me to pick favorites in Greco. will be a very close competition, I will write more when we have the brackets. 57kg: -- 65kg: -- 74kg: -- 86kg: -- 97kg: -- 125kg: -- in Greco this is just the list of favorite wrestlers in no order, I tried to make the list as short as possible. there are some other good guys in the entry list with relatively good chance to qualify. 60kg: 67kg: 77kg: 87kg: 97kg: 130kg: ps: my knowledge is very limited about women's wrestling

thanks I didn't know that, what about the Olympics, is it 1st vs 8th, 2nd vs 7th etc ? or something like you said for the World Cup ?

Iran will use the reserve guys in the Hungary Sabre World Cup in team event. I wonder if that affects other teams for the Olympic qualification, but I assume not much . it's between France and Russia but one of them may face Iran in the 5th-8th classification

Draw https://results.ittf.com/ittf-web-results/html/TTE5279/results.html#/knock-outs

we have Russian nationals this weekend, the winner most probably will go to the Olympics. Zaur Uguev (57), Zaurbek Sidakov (74), Artur Naifokov (86) win the nationals, 65kg final is scheduled for tomorrow but Gazhimurad Rashidov is expected to win. at 97kg, the great Abdulrashid Sadulev was exempt and didn't wrestle here, he will be in Tokyo. and Russian's main guy at 125 (Shamil Sharipov) didn't wrestle here too, why ? because he has to wrestle in Hungary next weekend for the Olympic quota. he will wrestle Sergey Kozyrov (125kg winner here) in April. this is the only weight Russia failed to qualify in Nur-Sultan. this is the 74kg final, where a VERY DUMB mistake by Razambek Zhamalov most probably cost him an Olympic medal, he was leading 2-0 against World Champion Sidakov, gave up a pushout in last 10 seconds, still leading 2-1, gave up another in last 2 seconds because he thought he had a 2pointer and 2-2 would be enough for him! which was a mistake, he had 1+1

UWW confirms the rumor I heard long time ago the former world champion Khetag Tsabolov will wrestle for Serbia, in UWW database they are showing Serbian flag instead of Russia for him https://www.iat.uni-leipzig.de/datenbanken/dbwrestling/daten.php?spid=8D1E74B679C345E2B5B08857723DC54C still he will miss the European Qualifier next week since he wrestled for Russia 3 years ago in the 2018 European Champs but if I'm not wrong he will eligible to wrestle in the last chance qualifier in Bulgaria. he is a very tricky wrestler, at the age of 29 he is not in his best shape but he beat world champion Sidakov in the Russian nationals last year. he can beat anybody in the world if his opponent makes a mistake. if he qualifies, he will be one of the medal contenders in Tokyo.

the rest of Asian qualifiers 2nd round will be held in June and one venue is announced for each group. in 6 groups the top seed team is going to host the other 4 teams, only two top seeds won't host it. Australia and Iran. I assume Australia didn't want it, but Iran wanted it desperately and everybody here is angry about the new FIFA/AFC decision. because Bahrain will host the group which is worst possible host for any Iranian team. any other country would be fine. it will be very hot in KSA, USA, KUW, BRN and QAT in June but who cares. they lobby better in AFC and host most important competitions. CHN, JPN and KOR will host the remaining 3 groups. apparently no other AFC match will be held in Iran in near future, because their sponsors can't work here because of the sanctions! when Iran lost to Bahrain and Iraq with that conman Wilmots. we were hoping to make up for that at home. but now again we have to play in Bahrain. Iran has to win all remaining 4 matches to make sure about the qualification. I think 10 points will be enough too (not a sure thing though) but our football NT usually plays better in Asia with its back against the wall. 2006 and 2014 WCQ were mission impossibles (they had to win some away matches in a row to qualify) but they made it. let's see if our new coach can survive the biggest task of his coaching career. it doesn't look like mission impossible on paper, Iran has a much better team than both IRQ and BRN but I know our neighbors , they always play 10 times better when they face Iran

I think if Slovenia draw both Sweden and Germany it will go to the number of goals these 3 teams scored against each other. not the GD against Algeria.

this is just a mistake, he can't qualify in another weight per rules

entries for the European Qualifier in Hungary https://unitedworldwrestling.org/article/european-olympic-games-qualifier-entries the freestyle competition looks a bit "weak" to me. but it will be a huge task for anybody to qualify in Greco-Roman. I think Russia will complete its max 12 quotas in men's wrestling here. of course draw and luck will play a big factor. UWW removed the Olympic ranking from its website so I can't say who is going to be seeded.

the last K1 event on WKF calendar in Morocco (for the Olympic ranking) is now replaced by K1 event in Portugal from 30 April to 2 May for the Olympic qualification https://www.wkf.net/news-center-new/karate-1-premier-league-rabat-postponed/1495

it seems IWF got IOC's permission to extend the Olympic qualification period https://www.iwf.net/2021/03/05/update-extension-tokyo-2020-qualification-period/ the Olympic event in their calendar will finish on 31 May, so it seems 31 May is the new deadline.

and Kuwait won a bronze medal by beating .... nobody the Russian guy withdrew from the bronze medal match. the level isn't great in general here. there are some big names in some weights but in general both the qualify and the quantity aren't great. no surprise we will have the European QT in couple weeks. Kazakhstan and Hungary brought almost their full squad here. probably kind of their internal trials. Russia is here with "almost" A team but their guys for the European OQT are absent as expected. hopefully the level is better in freestyle, we only sent two FS guys here. don't ask me why just 2 , why not a full team, (or even why not sending nobody) our federation is sometimes "hard" to understand.

not really interesting, that was too easy for Mohammad Ibrahim he will have another Russian in the next round. I expect another W

yes I read CAS statement, I could never trust this lawyer guy for another case in another sport. he somehow didn't tell the entire truth once again. still any kind of suspension is better than the indefinite one. (which will kill the sport completely) I mean from the Iranian athletes point of view. it seems IJF was too much excited after making that Hollywood story to impose a ban which doesn't even exist in their rules. and btw this Pavitt guy once again has some mistakes in his article. but that's pretty normal for ITG. I will be surprised if I see an article without a mistake from them.

according to Iran Judo Federation lawyer, CAS lifted IJF's ban on Iran JF. that was very surprising for me, this case was like a thief who did lots of robberies (and didn't get caught) but got arrested for a crime he didn't commit (framed by a conman) but still evidences from the previous crimes were there. it seems even CAS judges didn't believe the Mongolian hero/bastard lies. only stupid people would believe him but then as I said previous evidences were too much to ignore. I prefer to wait for the official confirmation, but even if this is true we won't see Iranians in international judo competitions, because the problem is still there (and is not going to be solved anytime soon, specially considering the current tension) and I'm sure IJF will be looking really hard for another story. but at least they can participate in the Asian events without being worried about the draw. well Judo is a lost cause for me but at least this will be a great news for something like 60,000 people in Iranian judo community. I know most of them wanted to switch to another sport (mostly Kurash), but right now they have a reason to continue training, 2022 Asian Games is around the corner.

watch how a random Kyrgyz guy (well not really random, I knew him for a long time but still) makes the great Artur Aleksanyan fly today in an international tournament in Ukraine. executing this technique is really hard against anybody 100kg, let alone against the Olympic champion, one of the best wrestlers in the world. this is the last match of the video ra

I mean the whole winter sports community most of them are related. you always see familiar surnames. and they (I mean all of them, officials, coaches, athletes and even commentators) always make the same excuses after each competition, their mentality is like we go to a competition, have fun, finish last, come back home and make excuses. and they are lucky nobody cares about winter sports here. PS: obviously that labor camp part was a joke. the point is they are not trying hard to improve. it's just having fun for them. like a family holiday