MHSN

his name is not on ITA's list either https://ita.sport/sanction/united-world-wrestling-uww/ but sometimes they are a bit slow, if this is true, his name will appear in this list some time soon. (unless this is a local test thing)

some sources here report that "possible" drug cheat Khetag Tsabolov won something in the court and he is going to the Olympics after all (they were supposed to send a Greco wrestler Ali Arsalan instead of him) I just checked and Tsabolov's name had been removed from ITA's list which confirms the reports.

Our possible gold medalists will receive something around 300,000$, wrestlers will get an extra ~100,000$ from their own federation Dollar/Rial exchange rate changes daily and hourly , so it might be different when they actually receive the money few months later.

and time to break the Olympic curse I remember the days when Italy dominating the World Champs (and World League) with Velasco and the coach before him but still always failed the tie break against the Netherlands at the Olympics ! actually I just re-watched the 1996 final recently. have to say volleyball looked like a completely different sport back then.

Belarus sources announced that Mahamedkhabib Kadzimahamedau is invited by IOC to participate at the Olympics. and I just checked his name is back on AIN list of IOC. https://olympics.com/ioc/paris-2024-individual-neutral-athletes they took his quota and gave it to Chamizo, obviously they are not going to deny Chamizo now, this means we will have 18 wrestlers at 74kg.

another victim of flagbearer curse before even the start of the games? but no I highly doubt that will be a problem, as you said that's more an issue for head-to-head sports. but you never can be sure, the previous government and their guys are still at office. back in 2008 they withdrew a swimmer last minute (for the first time in a non-head-to-head sport) which wasn't supposed to happen and they probably won't be competing in the same apparatus anyway. just have to sit next to each other for an hour or more. I'm more worried about the fact that Olfati is drawn in subdivision 1 and has to be the flagbearer only few hours before his competition . that was a dumb pick anyway

ITA banned Wesley Kitts for 1 month and disqualified his results since April 2024 which means his World Cup results is nullified now. participating at World Cup was mandatory to be eligible, not sure if a DSQ counts as legal participation btw IWF was supposed to possibly ban countries with 3 or more doping cases from the Olympics. 3 NOCs fall in the criteria, Ukraine, Turkey and Turkmenistan and it looks like they can walk free after paying some money as penalty.

Is this a common thing to ban someone for just 1 month, and picking up the dates carefully to make sure he doesn't miss the Olympics ?

I just checked Maxim Sacultan's instagram page and based on what he wrote, he is going to Paris after all. his presence will be important not because he is a medal threat but because he is seeded (seed 5, exactly in the same place as Mamedov) and without him they had to move up other seeded wrestlers and the bottom half would become too hard. for now among the favorites, Tevanyan and Tulga are in the top half, Amouzad, Musukaev and Aliyev are in the bottom half. which means bottom half is harder. but two big favorites, Kiyooka and Retherford are unseeded. their place in the draw will determine which half is harder.

I can see the mistake now, their software automatically deduced some points from everybody (25% of points they hot in June of previous years) and that shouldn't happen because they froze the ranking on 1 June. to have the real ranking for the Olympic seeding you just have to change the month from blank to June. which gives the same result as checking every single athletes points, but just faster and easier

there is always an easy formula for Aman. to me he can beat anybody in the world (except Rei Higuchi) if he survives the early storm. his gas tank is unbelievable and if he is not down too much after the 1st period he can always manage a comeback. 5-6pts diff is probably nothing for him. Harutynyan is a very explosive wrestler, he can score big points in par-terre but he usually gasses early (most probably because he cuts a lot for 57kg, he is a 61kg wrestler normally) Aman needs the correct strategy, keeping the head down, putting non-stop pressure. try to avoid a take down in middle of the mat at all cost. (even if he has to run like Usain Bolt) from the list of unseeded wrestlers only couple of them can do some damage, so Aman/Harut match is very likely to happen. this is probably the most important match for both of them if they want to win a medal.

Seeding, nothing we didn't know already but nice to see it in writing https://uww.org/article/paris-2024-seeds-announced-freestyle-greco-roman-womens-wrestling

Olympic Ranking doesn't work like this. athletes had a short window at the start of year to change their Olympic weight and once they do it. they can't reverse it back until the next year. while in World Ranking you can be ranked in different weight classes but in Olympic Ranking that's not possible. you can be ranked just in one weight. Bouchti moved up to 57kg after she failed to qualify for the Olympics and therefore took all of her ranking pts to the new weight. she received an unexpected Olympic quota few months later but unless WT does something super special she has to be ranked #17 in Paris. I followed this case in past couple of months because this is crucial for our girl Nematzadeh, if they put Bouchti back as the #7 seed, (which is very unlikely but with WT you can never be sure) the current seed 7 Nematzadeh has to withdraw.

It's the same the last ranking event finished on 9th June. but I wrote that post in middle of it after the freestyle competition. they changed the entry list few times after that. that's why my old post is not accurate anymore.

I already wrote long posts about it top 8 seeds will have fixed places in the bracket. the other 8 wrestlers will be drawn randomly

based on this ranking, for having more "Classification Points" https://arena.uww.org/weight-category/show/1eedaad3-d337-6e3e-93b1-858d6f48bf0a/print/rankings just because she had a lucky win by fall. which has 5 CP

Freestyle entries, no surprise and no new change https://uww.org/article/paris-2024-olympics-freestyle-entries

women's entries https://uww.org/article/paris-2024-olympics-womens-wrestling-entries

Final Entries http://m.worldtaekwondo.org/competition/view.html?nid=141210&mcd=L06 MKD took the women's 57kg wild card and not Sierra Leone. which means we will have another Kiani vs Alizadeh in the first round also our 49kg girl has to withdraw from the Games if they reinstate El-Bouchti's ranking points , she moved to 57kg (thinking she lost the quota) and therefore lost all her ranking points. for now she will be ranked last but they reinstate her points that will be trouble. but I assume they won't. I still can't understand how the hell they gave that +80kg quota to Uzbekistan, now they have 3 male athletes !! that shouldn't happen under current rules. Gurtsiev of BLR is also there, which means we have 18 athletes for men's 58kg.

remember that Afghan/refugee guy Alireza Abbasi ? today I read a story about him, the guy born and raised in Iran from Afghan parents and works full time with Iranian coaches. his coach (who is a very respected person) had an interview today about him, talking about Abbasi's story. apparently he lost his quota because someone in "Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs of Iran" didn't do his job properly. after the Asian qualifiers, the IOC contacted them asking for more documents about Abbasi but nobody answered the email in time. he is now officially accepted by IOC/WT but since they didn't accept his documents in time of the tournament, he is not going to Paris. This is a short interview with himself. very upset about the officials in Iran, he also admits he once tried to participate under AFG's flag but since the situation was terrible there he came back to be a refugee again. https://www.etemadonline.com/بخش-ورزش-18/666687-عباسی-اداره-اتباع-ایران-المپیک

he is 42 years old and never wrestled a single official match since Tokyo. the normal answer is No but he proved before that he is not human . we are talking about the best Greco wrestler in history. we don't know about his current shape, but Cuba has another very good wrestler in Oscar Pino. if they are sending Lopez instead of him that means Lopez is ready. he had to cut something like 40-50 kilos to be 130kg though.

now we have the full list of wrestlers in Greco-Roman. it's easy to make the brackets for top 8 seeds. all of these guys have to beat an unseeded wrestler first to reach the QF. and some of unseeded wrestlers are much much better. 60kg: SHARSHENBEKOV (KGZ) vs ARNAUT (ROU) /// FUMITA (JPN) vs MOHSENNEJAD (IRI) CAO (CHN) vs RODRIGUEZ (VEN) /// CIOBANU (MDA) vs BAKHRAMOV (UZB) 67kg: JAFAROV (AZE) vs PETIC (MDA) /// NEMES (SRB) vs ISMAILOV (KGZ) ORTA (CUB) vs ESMAEILI (IRI) /// GALSTYAN (ARM) vs SYLLA (FRA) 77kg: KUSAKA (JPN) vs VARDANYAN (UZB) /// AMOYAN (ARM) vs PENA (CUB) SULEYMANOV (AZE) vs LEVAI (HUN) /// MAKHMUDOV (KGZ) vs ZHADRAYEV (KAZ) 87kg: CENGIZ (TUR) vs MUNOZ (COL) /// BELENIUK (UKR) vs TURSYNOV (KAZ) LOSONCZI (HUN) vs KOMAROV (SRB) /// NOVIKOV (BUL) vs SID AZARA (ALG) 97kg: ALEKSANYAN (ARM) vs MEJIA (HON) /// ROSILLO (CUB) vs OMAROV (CZE) KHASLAKHANAU (AIN) vs VENCKAITIS (LTU) /// SARAVI (IRI) vs SAVOLAINEN (FIN) 130kg: MIRZAZADEH (IRI) vs COON (USA) /// ALEXUC CIURARIU (ROU) vs NABI (EST) MOHAMED (EGY) vs LEE (KOR) /// MENG (CHN) vs ACOSTA (CHI)

remember this ? apparently Australian Gymnastics federation brought this to CAS, trying to take the 2nd Vault quota. but they lost it

They will send Lopez and we knew it for months.

nobody, they will send another wrestler I know Turkey has a couple of decent super heavyweight Greco wrestler. and as I said in another thread Serbia is going to send Ali Arsalan 72kg World Champion in Greco-Roman, since last week he started training freestyle in his hometown in Iran (edit: I just heard that Arsalan was a freestyle wrestler first before switching to Greco, maybe he is not that bad )