MHSN

The last one at +68kg was kind of weird, she was sitting on 3 cautions (Hansoku Chui) and made a terrible mistake asked her coach to challenge a decision, and that's illegal and she received her 4th caution and lost by disqualification !!

2020 Asian Taekwondo Championship in Lebanon got cancelled , no need to say why no update if they postponed the competition or changed the venue but Asian Taekwondo Confederation noticed all national federations about this.

Russia won 3 out of 5 gold medals in first day of freestyle finals, maybe people can say that's OK the rest of Europe won 2 gold medals but no both other gold medalists were also originally Russian. we know about Magomedmorad Gadzhiev wrestling for Poland for a while but now Belarus also has a former Russia NT member in Magomaedkhabib Kadimagomedov ! he won 79kg gold by a brilliant performance against Ramazanov in the final. but since he wrestled for Russia at 2017 I don't think he will be eligible for the Tokyo 2020 even if he cuts weight for 74kg. ps: this is not even Russia #1 team except for of course Sadulaev Sadulaev added another gold medal to his tally, I think some people will claim he is getting weaker but I'm not so sure , he is just changing his style, he still scores at will. he just doesn't want to score too much ! but the most impressive wrestler today was Kurban Shiraev. this kid has a bright future, he won silver medal in World Juniors in 2019 losing to our wrestler Maghsoudi, I wish Maghsoudi could improve with the same rate as him I don't know what Russian coaches will do about their team trials but this kid really deserves a chance to wrestle Rashidov in a trial. but it seems Russia already decided about 4 weights. nobody questions Sadulaev but their 2nd guy won gold at 57kg and 65kg (and we will see their 74kg in the final tomorrow) it will be a mistake in my opinion to just send 2019 World Champions without another trial.

no Chamizo did nothing wrong, it was his own fault, that's one of the basic things they teach to the kids on wrestling clubs, when someone is throwing you and you are on the air NEVER put your arm down. this is a bit sad but if someone wants to watch the action

there were lots of petitions and campaigns (or whatever you can call it) in social media to change that stupid policy and finally it was successful. Iran NPC officially changed its policy (at least regarding team sports) but it was already too late for the football team they didn't confirm their participation before the deadline and therefore their quota goes to Thailand ! but at least it wasn't too late for wheelchair basketball and they will participate in Tokyo paralympics. but the whole story is unbelievable, and those poor blind footballers will pay the price I wonder if there is any other country in the world with this level of mismanagement

yes that's a valid reason, but for some reasons I prefer she doesn't qualify directly this qualification format is too complicated, you have to consider so many things , for example I hope Iran qualify 2 girls directly and Alipour wins the Asian quota. but then it's only possible if nobody from Africa uses 61kg quota. there is a girl from Morocco on 11th place position. and I hope Egyptian girls at 55kg and +61kg stay ahead of her in the ranking which means I hope they collect points but not "lots of points" to qualify directly I still hope Feryal wins the final because that Chinese girl is also a candidate for the Asian spot. and btw as you said even if Feryal stays 5th or 6th, that's still possible if Shaymaa qualifies directly in Paris . so I guess I should count more on your 50kg girl but then you also have Yassmin Attia in this weight and she is also capable of qualifying in Paris.

taking a look at today results, we may have some major changes in the Olympic rankings. no change in the most predictable event men's Kata though. Iran brought two in the final and 2 for bronze but it was really a bad day for Olympic qualifications, It was a terrible day for Sajjad Ganjzadeh, he lost in the 2nd round (while leading until the very last second), both Horne and Arkania made it to the final but that's not the worst news for him because he still has more than 1000pts lead but that was at 84kg, Zabih Poursheib made it to the final and now he will lead Ganjzadeh by a good margin. Iran NT coach made it clear that he is not going to interfere in Ganjzadeh-Poursheib competition, whoever wins more points will go to the Olympics and right now that will be Pousheib Poursheib is such a great guy and probably most respected among Iranian Karatekas but Ganjzadeh is my favorite and I think he will do better in Tokyo. it's hard to say but I think I'm going to cheer for whoever faces Zabih in next two events. (and also the tomorrow final) this is also a very bad news for Ivan Kvesic. if Poursheib qualifies directly, he will lose his quota to Arkania. he can't do anything about it himself. Aktas and Poursheib are out of his reach. at women's 61kg, top 4 won't be changed after this event but our Rozi Alipour will make herself closer to Prekovic and Coban . even if Alipour can't make it to top 4, still every single points matter since she has a chance for the Asian quota. and surprisingly our reserve girl Alisaadi made it to the final ! at women's 68kg, now we have two other candidates, Feryal and Li, they are collecting points too fast to catch up with both Quirici and Semeraro. even without that she will be #1 candidate to take the African spot, even though I'm sure she wants to qualify directly to open the door for another Egyptian girl at 55kg. Semeraro was the biggest loser of the day in this weight. but superheavy weight was a total disaster for Abbasali if she could beat that Kazakh girl it was almost a done deal for her. but now things don't look good for her. Hocaoglu made it to the final and Berultseva and Chatziliadou will fight for bronze. Abbasali will still be #1 in this weight in the new ranking but they will shorten the gap. beside that I believe Hocaoglu has more chance than anybody else, she won almost nothing at the 2019 European Champs, she will only gain points in the next European Championships.

I hope everything is fine now, I also had some bad days this week and had been busy with that, only today I was available to watch the preliminary rounds in the morning/afternoon. speaking of empty hall, I was curious what was the TV coverage about it in Italy ? I know you have several sport TV channels , I wonder if it was live coverage for the finals in any of them ? (I remember I watched one night of finals on Rai Sport but that was just once) and about the draw, obviously you are not Kazakhstan there is a reason why I never want them to host wrestling competitions. 2019 Worlds draw was a huge scandal, in any other sport it could be a big news but this is a shame wrestling is not a major sport and I understand major news websites need more evidences to publish something. I analyzed the brackets and I have solid reasons to believe it was fixed. (the same as 2018, for Hungary in Greco-Roman) if you look at brackets in different weights, you see some countries exactly in the same place in the draw in several weights, 9 out of 10 Kazakh freestyle wrestlers received dream draw, even if we don't consider all those facts, that can't be just an accident. but UWW published something about changing the draw software and the whole draw process few weeks ago, so let's hope there are some better guys in UWW and they are fighting against this corruption, of course I don't expect them to make it public, I will be glad if they just don't let it happen again. specially for Olympic qualification tournaments.

March ? the scheduled date is April, and they can't postpone it because April is the deadline for Olympic Qualification. I assume and hope things will be much better about the virus outbreak in April but I was checking the ranking, Chinese weightlifters already participated enough tournaments for the Olympics qualification, they simply can withdraw for the Asian Championships. I'm sure they don't care about Asian Championships medals. and beside that if the tournament gets cancelled there is another solution, they can let Asian weightlifters to participate in other continental Championships. that happened before in 2016.

it seems I'm the only person interested in European Championship so let me talk to myself once more I'm sure most users here don't know Ibrahim Bolukbasi, because he never won anything big but this guy was always a tricky wrestler and today he almost pinned the great Sadullaev. he had the lock and only the great Rashid could survive that. I admire Sadullaev and consider him the best wrestler in the world right now and one of the best wrestlers in history but I would love to see someone beating him in freestyle wrestling when you lock head and one of the legs that's impossible to escape. but Rashid did the impossible. nd

it was a big day for Crescenzo of Italy, he made it to the final and his direct rival lost in the first round. he will take Samdan's position in the next ranking and will have a good lead over him with only 2+1 events left. also even a bigger day for Figueira of Brazil, he is in the final and El-Sawy (EGY) lost in the first round to our Mehdizadeh, and since it was Figueria's lucky day, Mehidzadeh got injured in the next match and therefore eliminated the Egyptian and also made it much easier for Figueia to go into the final. (I just hope that's nothing serious, we need him for the Paris qualifier) also at 75kg, Stanislav Horuna had a good chance to catch up with the American Thomas but lost in the repechage, still he will receive something like 300pts from here and will be very close to the 4th place in the next ranking. interestingly we will see another Busa/Aghayev in the final, like old days I think Busa already guaranteed his Olympic quota with this. no big change in women's kata, women's 50kg and 55kg. even though it could be a disastrous day for our Bahmanyar as she lost early to Spain but luckily for her the Spanish girl made it to the final and Bahmanyar will fight for bronze on Sunday. if she wins she will have something like 1000pts advantage over the rest. which is good (but not safe) with only 2 events left.

there are news here that Kazakhstan doesn't want to host the Asian Championships in April and the competition is about to be cancelled. that will be a terrible terrible news for some Asian weightlifters regarding the Olympic qualification, specially for Iran. the whole plan was to get Moradi ready to set the necessary record in April. if they cancel the Asian Champs. there is no other tournament in April even March is almost empty. there is just one tournament in Colombia !! but this is not important for China to participate, they already have enough points to qualify a full team, maybe they can have the competition without China ?!

of course for the same reason as India, they don't want Chinese nationals on their country as long as this virus exists. that's why it's hard/impossible to find a willing country to host Asian competitions these days, China can afford not participating in normal Asian tournaments but they are not OK missing Olympic qualifiers.

if it was an official news I would not use the term "it seems", and you are not supposed to find everything in English speaking media

that was smart, you made me to confess I made it up myself

we don't know that yet.

it seems Korea, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan refused to host the Asian qualifier ! now UWW is offering Kyrgyzstan to take it.

Is this confirmed ? or just a rumor or suggestion ?! that's unbelievable. I mean everybody knows Kazakhstan would win the quota but still it's other countries' right to participate and try. Kazakhstan can't host the tournament they promised to host, so let's give them a free quota ?! giving free quotas in Oceania and Africa wasn't enough for FINA already ?! if nobody is interested to host the competition, they just can have it few days before the Qualification tournament in the Netherlands. (and Italy for the women's qualification)

seeding for the remaining weights for the Olympic qualifiers in Europe 60kg: #1 Kerem Kamal #2 Gevorg Gharibyan #3 Ivo Angelov 67kg: #1 Morten Thoresen #2 Gevorg Sahakyan #3 Karen Aslanyan 97kg: #? Nikoloz Kakhelashvili #1 Artur Omarov #2 Melonin Noumonvi #3 Matti Kuosmanen

seeded athletes for the European Qualifiers after 1st day in Olympic weights, remember only top 2 will be seeded but if any of them doesn't participate they go to the 3rd guy in the ranking and so on 77kg: #1 Pavel Liakh #2 Sanan Suleymanov #3 Paulius Galkinas #4 Roman Vlasov #5 Volodimyr Yakovliev I'm almost sure Likah and Galkinas will participate, so Roman Vlasov most probably won't be seeded. I think nobody wants him in his bracket. 87kg: #1 Ivan Huklek #2 Aleksanr Komarov #3 Islam Abbasov #4 Metehan Basar #5 Eividas Stankevicius 130kg: #1 Alin Alexuc-Ciurariu #2 Mykola Kuchmii #3 Arvi Savolainen #4 Zurabi Gedekhauri #5 Beka Kandelaki Except the Romanian guy being #1, I'm not sure if the rest participate ! but Kuchmii is likely to participate and take the 2nd seed.

well it's easy to predict that Asia #1 will be and Asia #2 will be . but if they want to participate here that's another question. but according to Iranian Swimming Federation, they received a letter from organizers and the Asian Qualifiers are postponed to 24 February, in the same venue, Kazakhstan. but this is just a proposal and not confirmed yet. it seems they want to kill time as much as possible because both Chinese teams are in Europe (in Spain if I'm not wrong) and in a kind of quarantine

well not sure if we can trust wikipedia, none of them participated at the Asian Games ! but even if they are interested to participate in Asian qualifiers, it doesn't mean they want to be the punching bag at the World qualifiers.

how come they know there will be 2 Asian countries interested to participate ? I think only China and Kazakhstan will participate at the Asian qualifiers and one of them (China) will qualify from Asia.

there will be two Italian wrestlers in SF later today, no surprise about Kakhelasvhili but I think nobody expected this guy Russo to beat Russia and Armenia ! 60kg: Magisalu vs Gharibyan /// Kamal vs Shavadze 67kg: Thoresen vs Liavonchyk /// Abdullaev vs Aslanyan 72kg: Stabler vs Kurak /// Can vs Lomadze 82kg: Russo vs Huseynov /// Wagner vs Aleksandrov 97kg: Aleksanyan vs Kuosmanen /// Golovin vs Kakhelashvili

it was a kind of boring evening, the only "wow" moment was Novikov's 2pts throw right at the end of the match to beat Komarov. most of other matches were boring and were decided by par-terre. of course that's not unusual for Greco-Roman in this level. I was more impressed by Levai and Novikov, they are both #2 in their countries behind current World Champions (T. Lorincz and Beleniuk) but they were great today. and I still wonder how come Kuchmii managed to beat Kayaalp and it was almost for nothing ! he lost to the Romanian guy in SF by cautions. another thing it seems Serbia is going to complete its collection, they have some good wrestlers and they got couple more from Georgia to complete the collection but I don't think Datunashvili can do much for them. he lost in the first round today. btw in case people are interested about the seeding for the Olympic qualifiers from what I see Alin AC (ROU) guaranteed 1st seed at 130kg. Kuchmii can be #2 if he wins the bronze. I'm not sure if other guys currently in repechage will wrestle the Olympic qualifiers. at 87kg, both bronze medalists will be seeded of cousre if they participate. at 77kg, Suleymanov will be seed 1 if they send him (I assume he is not their #1 guy, or at least he wasn't before today) Pavel Liakh despite being eliminated has a chance to be in seed 1 if he finishes in top 8 (but we don't know that before the end of repechages) and bronze medalists (if not qualified already) will be next in line. in case people didn't read the rules, only top 2 will be seeded for the Olympic Qualifiers.