MHSN

and it seems that wasn't just a simple plane crash. apparently it was shot down by accident. even though Iran denies it and invites everybody involved to investigate the accident and I personally don't believe anything coming from the USA under this administration but there are signs making me believe the theory. reading stories about the passengers, it's really tragic, most of them were highly educated. mostly Iranian-Canadian or Iranians living/studying in Canada came to their home country for their holidays there were at least 3 couples coming back home just for their wedding this is one of the victims, his latest tweet few minutes before the accident, he is actually making a joke about his possible death I have lots of friends, former classmates and even close relatives (aunt, cousin etc) living in Canada and when I was reading the list I was afraid to see a familiar name and I did, my classmate and actually my closest friend in my MS studies were there. I wasn't in contact with him for couple years, didn't know he was even married ... oh well, bad news keep coming

Australia is out, hard to say it was just one bad match vs Qatar. they also didn't shine against Korea and India. it will be in the semifinal. that last group match between Iran and China will decide who plays who.

and in middle of all this, we had a plane crash last night from Tehran to Kiev, killing all 176 passengers while most passengers were Iranian, there were Swedish, Canadian, Afghan, British and Ukrainian citizens on board.

yes but mostly crappy naturalized players. in volleyball you can have one "naturalized player" officially. they are mostly unknown players but they are playing good as a team. Qatar brought Australia to the tie break at the Asian Champs in Tehran, so it was expected to be not easy for Australia, still a 3-0 defeat is a big surprise. I think Australia will be out if Korea beat Qatar tomorrow.

no more of that nice lady who wanted to hug everybody ?! pity

Threatening cultural sites ? I remember only two organizations did that before. Taliban and ISIS. this puts USA in the same category as them. actually there are more similarities. only two months ago, IR was in its weakest point after the protests. this is a rough estimate but I can say their support was something like 10-15% at the time. but just after that terror and now the new tweet I can say things have changed completely. now it's something like 80-85% of course a foreign enemy always unified the people. specially someone with IQ of a monkey and a big mouth. this terror has rejuvenated and prolonged IR for another 20 years . for people like me (who believe in slow changes) that was a punch to the face. that was 100 steps backward. threatening the cultural sites, even the thought of this will pull Iranians of all political spectra behind the IR. they lost an important general but gained a lot instead. the turnout for Soleimani's funeral was beyond imagination. for most people he died a hero. he died making Iranian borders "safe" against terrorist groups like ISIS , Taleban, Alahwaz, Rigi group etc. to me personally, I can never convince myself to mourn for someone like him, yes he was a war veteran in 8 years bloody war against Saddam (and guess who sold weapons, specifically chemical weapon to him) and I always respect all of them but then he was a member of IRGC (aka Sepah) and while himself wasn't involved directly, but his organization is responsible for so many bad things here. but I can say most people do not share the same view as me. ps: IR means Islamic Republic, the current regime

Ajan is the main reason for corruption this is a common knowledge in Weightlifting community . people don't talk about it because almost all national WL federations made deals with him. he sold lots of World/Olympic medals to different countries. that ARD report sounds correct to me. it fits with what i knew about IWF and Ajan himself. I give you guys some examples regarding Iranian WLers. these 3 examples are 100% confirmed for me, there are more stories though. back in 2000 Olympics, 1999 World Champion and top favorite for the gold Shahin Nassirinia came to the stage, injured his arm in his first snatch attempt and left the competition. at the time it was just bad luck but later his teammates (and later himself) admitted that was fake, he was told by IWF to pull out, because IWF has "proofs" against the Iranian team (and specially Nassirinia) and will disqualify the whole team if he doesn't pull out ! it turned out IWF wanted their boy Pyrros Dymas to win his 3rd Olympic gold medal. Nassirinia never officially got suspended or even accused of doping. and Iran won two gold medals in the next days. (mostly because Nassirinia followed the order and let Dymas take that gold medal) and in 2006, the whole Iranian team tested positive for doping except just one guy, Hossein Rezazadeh, he was double Olympic Champion and face of World Weightlifting at the time. simply the best weightlifter in the world at the time. IWF didn't want him to get caught. I heard from some of his teammates that someone else gave urine samples instead of him. obviously they were using the same drugs (thanks to the Bulgarian coach) and one more example, back in 2009 in South Korea, the host nation didn't win a gold medal in men's weightlifting until the last day, they wanted that gold but there was an Iranian guy Saeid Alihosseini who had broken the WR in training and everybody knew he will win the gold. 2 days before the competition he was told to fake an injury during the training and leave South Korea because IWF found some evidences about his doping and if he leaves he won't get suspended. he did but still they suspended him. and that Korean guy who the gold medal. ironically that guy An Yong-Kwon never won any title (even continental) beside that gold medal !

that's the key, there is no will here to invest on winter sports. they are not part of the Olympics (as I said before here Olympics = Summer Olympics) and they are not popular here. there are lots of ski resorts next to Tehran and I know so many people spent their holidays there to have fun. but not for a serious sport. if you take a look at Iranian skiers, most of them share the same surnames (Saveh-Shemshaki, Kalhor, Seyd) they are local families in those ski resorts, and when you are limited to 3-4 families you will finish 3 minutes behind China

that was impossible. supreme leader should be a cleric, not a general. you know these guys have their own school, and some of them have a higher degree which called "Ayatollah" , supreme leader should be an Ayatollah. that's the rule but well they bend the rules before to appoint him when Khomeini died. he wasn't an Ayatollah at the time, they made him one overnight. even though right now there is no "candidate" to take over when Khameneyi dies. so nobody can predict what will happen that day. (maybe he is starting to think he will live forever ?!!) that guy who challenged Rouhani in last presidency was supposed to be a candidate (at least that was a guess from the analysts) but since he lost an election he is out of the picture. just to give you a better picture, at least for their own supporters they try to picture the supreme leader as someone holy, untouchable, something like God , maybe that was possible 30 years ago but nowadays it's really hard to sell someone (even to their own supporters) as the supreme leader.

WT announced the new World Ranking which confirms all previous calculations about the qualified athletes. the only difference is the 6th athlete at women's 57kg is Anastasija Zolotic and not Zhou Lijun ! so Zhou indeed needed to win the Grand Slam quota to qualify which she won.

he was always there. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. wherever Iran has proxy groups to support. I assume he was spending only 1-2 months of the year inside the country. I assume you don't know what was his position, Iran has 2 armies (weird, I know) a regular army and IRGC or as we call it simply Sepah, they created Sepah after 1979 revolution because they didn't trust the "army" at the time. they were afraid of a coup , the country wasn't stable at all. after 40 years Sepah is not just military anymore, they are in everything, everywhere, something like mafia. Sepah has different units, one of them is Quds (or Ghods) which was leaded by this guy in past 23 years. Quds force "manages" things outside of Iranian border. that's why I said he was in shadow for so many years. I'm quite sure 7-8 years ago most people didn't know him here. the regime for a reason (which we don't know but we can guess) tried to bold him in past few years. I can guess he was supposed to take a bigger role in future. maybe being the president in 2025 or maybe sooner in 2021 when people won't show up for the election (for obvious reasons) and with low turnout the hardliners always win. this is just my guess, nobody knew for sure

seriously ? better than Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia is a desert, they don't know what's snow ! being better than most Asian countries don't mean they are any good. it means the other Asian countries are extremely bad. Iran CC skiers are still kilometres behind even top Asian countries.

Just woke up to that news . wow That was a miscalculated move, there will be a response, and it won't be small. now a war is more possible than ever. probably a sure thing. Ghasem Soleimani was always the man in the shadow, he was more known outside of Iran. and I think his role was exaggerated both by Iranian and western media. he was just a general. they will replace him with someone else tomorrow. if I were American tourists, I wouldn't go anywhere near the middle east. I don't give a shit about this guy, he was a criminal, like Trump and his group. the world is probably a better place without all of them. but right now the bad news for me is they shot down all activities (including sport competitions) here for the next 2 days

decent ? no way. from what I know there were talks about starting Biathlon and Curling but never happened. and won't happen anytime soon. actually there is a skating federation but that's for roller sports. but if one day they decide to start those Ice sports at least they won't start from zero. there is a base for that but there is a simple answer , in Iran they simply don't care about Asian Winter Games or even Winter Olympics. 99% people don't even know Winter Olympics has the same importance as the Summer Olympics. They are not going to start something which is not in the "real" Olympics and also there is no interest for that inside the country. Winter sports are simply being treated as non-Olympic sports. Underwater Hockey probably has more chance than Curling ps: if it was a martial arts sport on ice or snow that would be different martial arts quickly get popular here

Yep . not a tough guess I think Ice sports, Luge, Ski Jumping, Freestyle, Curling and Biathlon do not even exist here. I don't know much about "Ski mountaineering" though. I didn't know we have such things until I saw that list of 6.

I just read on the news that Iran will send 6 athletes (3 boys 3 girls) to the YOG, it will be the biggest delegation ever for Iran in any kind of Winter Olympics and in the article I read, the journalist asked about what's the point of participation in Winter sports when Iran didn't improve even an inch after decades of just participating ?! and I'm kind of agree with that. while most of winter sports don't even exist here but at least Alpine, Cross-country and snowboard have a long history here. specially Alpine skiing. most countries never have snow so they have valid reasons to never achieve anything in winter sports but that's not the case here, the thing is nobody cares about winter sports so why bother to participate ? but still I wish the best of luck for those 6 young athletes. hopefully they won't finish last here

That was quite a goal and even after a day that goal is still on top of the football news here. good for him he was completely forgotten , genius Wilmots didn't even invite him to the NT for those 2 crucial matches.

as @heywoodu said we have a different calendar. only christian minority celebrates 31 December. they celebrate both new years actually.

Norouz is the only new year in Iran and another thing, while you guys celebrate the new year exactly at 24:00 . here it's more fun sometimes it's 8 in the morning, the next year 14 pm. and it changes every year. exactly at the start of spring.

Happy new year to everybody who celebrate it. I assume it means everybody in this forum except me

UWW won't wait for CAS decision, they will make the changes after the B sample and official disqualification. back in 2016 when CAS overturned some decisions, they added all those wrestlers to the list again (without removing anybody) and we had few extra wrestlers in Rio. but I wonder if Khadjiev is the only positive doping result from 2019 Worlds,

That's probably more "fair" because UWW's formula for ranking wrestlers from 7th to last is terrible. but then the Qualification rule says "Top 6" qualify, and he is top 6 now. so I assume he should get the quota.

most probably the 7th place guy from Poland. but I think it's better to wait for the official confirmation.