MHSN

Taekwondo wasn't part of the European Games. so this is an EXTRA European Championship to make up for that in the World Ranking. in short this is not a real European Championship but a very important tournament for the World Ranking with 40pts up for grab for the gold medalists. and one can say if European Taekwondo Union can't or don't want to put taekwondo into the European Games maybe they don't deserve to have a Grade-4 tournament instead.

I was expecting Sajan to make it to the final. but his poor defense in par terre cost him the final. he will be huge favorite for the bronze. not sure if you watched the 55kg IND/RUS but your wrestler was leading 12-9 until the last 20-30 seconds. he was very impressive in that match but still for winning the bronze he has to beat 2 very good wrestlers, I don't think that happens. for Sunil it will be even harder. from what I noticed, India is a very bad matchup for Russia ! even when Russia wins, they have to work really hard for that. Indian wrestlers are great in making their opponents tired but I can see all of your Greco wrestlers are weak in defending parterre and that will be costly against top wrestlers. 1 caution is enough for a Russian wrestler to beat you 8-0. unlike freestyle, parterre is VERY important in Greco. Sajan dominated the Japanese guy but when they gave him a passivity caution (which was dubious) the Japanese easily scored a 4pts throw. I mean really easily.

all of those fake refugees lost in their first matches and it was funny this time Israel didn't show up against the Iranian athlete Achab winning the gold was the worst possible news, but 63kg is weak in Europe and it was expected. let's see what Perez can do tomorrow, if he reaches the final that will put Hosseini out of top 6 at 58, I think DellAquila secured his Olympic quota, in this weight, South Korea, Russia, Iran and Italy are safe.

Qualified countries per new WKF Olympic ranking on 1 November Men Kata: 67kg: 75kg: +75kg: Women Kata: 55kg: 61kg: +61kg: Some major changes in continental qualifiers, and I'm sure we will see more in future. if it was today Thomas Scott could be the unluckiest ! he is 6th in the ranking (5th if we don't count Japan) and only 90pts behind Horuna of UKR, and despite winning the Pan-Am Games , still he can't qualify because first 2 continents will grab 2 available quota places in this weight. but still lots of things can change in future. almost the same goes to Alipour from Iran at 61kg, she is 5th in WR but still can't grab the Asian quota. Grande (Peru) winning the American quota is almost a sure thing, so if Alipour can't get in to top 4, her only chance is one of those Egyptian girls surpassing Morocco in the ranking which is very possible. and the European quota for women is also very close. Semeraro (ITA) and Plank (AUT) are both on 6th place, Italy has more points. Kalnins of Latvia put himself in a good position to qualify, he is now better than Gurbanli (AZE) but he has to pray for Kvesic and Horuna to qualify directly.

every time I open the PDF drawsheet for a Taekwondo competition, I see another Iranian competing for somewhere else this time Ehsan Naghibzadeh for the refugee team !!! he even represented Iran in 2013 World Champs (and didn't medal) and two other guys I was already aware of, Ali Noghandoost and Amir Hosseini. and if we count Dina Pouryounes. there are 4 Iranians competing for "refugee team" only in the first day of the competition I wonder how many others are waiting for the next 2 days. I think if I start to count, there are something like 20 or maybe more Iranians representing other countries (or the refugee team) right now, and I'm not talking about people with Iranian heritage growing up in those countries. all of these guys raised in Iran and most (if not all) of them represented Iran at least in a Youth/Junior international competition. unbelievable ! and none of them are real "refugees" (they are lying opportunists) but if they are, Iran should be #1 country in term of "taekwondo athletes" right violation !! but this is disgusting WT is easily letting them to participate for the refugee team (some of them aren't refugees, not even on paper) and even sometimes steal medals from European athletes. but maybe this Naghibzadeh can do something good for his own country, if he beats Israel in the first round (it's funny, isn't it ?) he will face Achab (Belgium) in the second round, eliminating Achab will be a big favor to our 68kg Hosseini in the Olympic ranking. even though I don't think nowadays Naghibzadeh is any good but we will see.

List of participating teams for Olympic qualifiers in each continent https://www.fivb.org/en/Volleyball/viewPressRelease.asp?No=89193&Language=en Europe: Africa: Asia: South America: North America:

List of participating teams for Olympic qualifiers in each continent https://www.fivb.org/en/Volleyball/viewPressRelease.asp?No=89193&Language=en even though we knew most of them already but still good to know the list of teams in Africa and now FIVB confirms Pakistan withdrew in Asia, replaced by Kazakhstan Europe: Africa: Asia: South America: North America:

Second medal day medalists 61kg: 1. Zholdoshbekov 2. Ravinder 3. Hayama & Takhtarov 74kg: 1. Zhamalov 2. Nokhodi 3. Sulava & Byambadorj 86kg: 1. Ghasempour 2. Magomedsaidov 3. Gocen & Ishiguro 92kg: 1. Nickal 2. Tsakulov 3. Shahbazi & Bastida 125kg: 1. Zare 2. Goloev 3. Lkhagvagerel & Batirmurzayev --------------------------------------------------- Team ranking: 1. Russia 145 2. Iran 139 3. Azerbaijan 111

I assume they weren't interested. Olympic Qualification is different than continental Championships. those without chance aren't usually interested there is also possible for Iran to withdraw. PS: in the men's tournament, they replaced Pakistan with the next team Kazakhstan, so I think they offered that to the next team here too.

This is a very good news but I didn't like this part "Watanabe said the taskforce is considering whether the screen should be visible by the audience as well as judges and referees" unbelievable if they are even thinking about not showing the score to the audience, TV or even the boxers ! and btw it's not clear if they want to use this for the Olympic Qualifiers too or not. I hope they do.

Protests are about the whole system which is terrible not sure if you guys are familiar with politics in Lebanon. but there are 3 big groups in Lebanon. Sunnis, Shias, and Christians, they had bloody civil war for years and to make "peace" they created a unique political system. they have election , which is probably fair and democratic but per rules. the prime minister should be a sunni, the president should be a christian and the parliament speaker should be a Shia. and it doesn't matter who has the majority in the parliament , that rule never changes. and if I'm not wrong (I'm not sure about this part) people only can vote for their own groups. I mean christian people only vote for christian members of the parliament and etc. it seems people don't like it anymore. this is a terrible system to be honest but there is no alternative right now, any other system may lead them again to another civil war. PS: what I wrote here is probably not 100% accurate about the political system in Lebanon ( there should be more details and ifs) but you can consider it almost correct.

of course I'm not complaining, more competition, more fun for me my point is, this is not as prestigious as World Juniors (U20) because at the juniors we have all best U20 wrestlers in the world. not the same here. and the level is relative, very good in some weights and very poor in some other weights. btw your 61kg Ravinder is the biggest surprise of the competition, he dominated the Russian wrestler 11-0 and then pinned the European Senior Champion Harutynyan in the semis considering he didn't medal in World Juniors this year, that's quite an improvement for such a short time, I have to say 61kg was one of those weights in a very high level. the same goes to our 74kg, he didn't medal at World Juniors but he was impressive here, beating the Russian wrestler of Hungary (who was very good in World Seniors this year)

As a wrestling fan I love to have more competitions, I enjoy watching it but this tournament really looks unnecessary, if you are good enough after the 20 you will make the main team of your country. some of these guys here aren't the best U23 wrestlers in their own country, because their U23 wrestler already participated at the World Seniors this year and need rest. instead we have lots of U20 wrestlers won medal here, for example 65kg gold medalist only won a bronze at World juniors !!! but the tournament still exists , so there is the list of medalists 57kg: 1. Andreu 2. Askarov 3. Sarlak & Khashalov 65kg: 1. Bayramov 2. Taniyama 3. Nykyforuk & Sacultan 70kg: 1. Skhulukhia 2. Valiev 3. Ibragimov & Seno 79kg: 1. Gaphrindashvili 2. Abakarov 3. Valiev & Sari 97kg: 1. Goleij 2. Musaev 3. Stasiuk & Khramiankou

First day Semifinalists: 57: vs / vs 65: vs / vs 70: vs / vs 79: vs / vs 97: vs / vs

Asian Qualifiers Draw Group A) Group B) It was supposed to be 8, but India withdrew, even tough the draw doesn't really matter, it will be Thailand-South Korea in the final after all

oh man, Ireland that was really cruel

I'm no expert in Hockey , but it looked like a dive to me

the match is not done yet. they are reviewing for a last second penalty for Canada

Brackets are available for the first day of freestyle, I can't see any World Senior Championship caliber wrestler in brackets but it will be interesting. Iran team already lost a wrestler before the competition. the 79kg guy denied visa. not Hungary's fault though. the wrestler himself made a mistake.

I was looking for results of "Galeb Belgrade Trophy" in Serbia because the whole Iranian squad is there, while watching the live results I saw something very surprising, a familiar name, former World and Asian Games champion Mehdi Khodabakhshi but not for Iran, he is representing Serbia ! he was off the radar in past few months, so after a little search it seems he is married to a Serbian girl ! (former Serbia NT member Tanackovic) I'm not sure if he can represents Serbia in official tournaments anytime soon because he was participating for Iran a year ago. and if I'm not wrong he even tried his chance in Iranian nationals few months ago but he got injured and withdrew (and he was upset our coach didn't give him a second chance) this is kind of funny because Milad Beigi left Iran because of him !! even though I know this is a different case and this is not for money. I wonder if this is a permanent change for Khodabakhshi or this is just temporary for this tournament ?!

Moradi only lifted a total of 200kg in Switzerland !!! 80+120, it was TOOOO easy for him but he didn't want to push for more. I'm not sure if he is aware of the situation and didn't want to risk more OR he was told even 200kg will be enough for him. that means only 100 ROBI points ! now he needs to lift something like 400/405 in his next two competitions. 400kg is usually not a big deal for him but considering his shoulder I'm not so sure if he recovers in time to lift 400kg. he has only 4-5 months left for that. the idiot Rostami also participated, it's not clear if IWF accepts his results or not, even if they do, that was a very poor performance, he even tried to jump something like 40kg !!! (from 190 to 232) to break the WR and probably forces IWF to accept his results but he miserably failed.

Congrats to Bahrain, they deserved it more than anybody else here. I don't like some of Bahrain teams (in other sports, specially football) but their handball team is great for such a small nation. Bahrain's population is smaller than the city I live ! Korea had the lead for something like 40-45 minutes but Bahrain finally took the lead and never gave it back to Korea. I hope they play good at the Olympics and don't make a joke of Asian Handball and South Korea has no chance in the qualification tournament, if it was Qatar (or even Bahrain) yes maybe but Korea no way.

I'm not worried about his record, I'm worried about his health condition. one more injury on that shoulder and his career is done. but because of this stupid qualification format he has no other option. and he still needs 2 more results in the 3rd period, actually 3 but 1 of them can be a zero.

yes he is but since he is recovering from a surgery he had last month, his record will be very low here. Kianoush Rostami also traveled to Switzerland hoping for a miracle to participate here (which was denied) since he bombed out in Pattaya, his only result in this period is a zero. he didn't register in time

in case you are deeply in love with Rowing, you can watch the Asian Championship finals tomorrow and the day after tomorrow with these links This is NOT the Olympic qualifier.