MHSN

Iran is not participating at all no money to send a full team the other side of world ! our federation is spending all they have on the senior team and Karate-1 competitions for the Olympic quotas. and Chile is really far, they didn't send a team to Serie A event in Chile as well.

I know. that's obvious but still they had to consider everything, HKG and India are much much weaker than other 6 teams. beside that in Asia the seeding is usually based on the latest competition, and in the last Olympic Qualifier, Iran, Bahrain and Korea was 2nd, 3rd and 4th, doesn't make sense to put all 3 of them in the same group. it seems they considered the last Asian Championship for the seeding, this is something new

Yes

surprise surprise, Bahrain just beat Qatar to face South Korea in the final. Bahrain played great from start to finish and if it wasn't for some miraculous saves from Qatar GK Saric the gap could be 7-8 goals. well I guess it was just our bad luck Bahrain had a bad day against South Korea to eliminate Iran (folks here think Bahrain lost intentionally which is nonsense I watched the match) and that big mistake from the refs in IRN-KUW match also changed lots of things here, they did a favor to all those teams in intercontinental Qualification group by letting Qatar and Bahrain play in the semifinal and not the final. I'm sure in Asia only Bahrain can beat Qatar, they are just a bad matchup for Qatar. Bahrain-Korea will be close but I think Bahrain will win this time. and special thanks to whoever made the seeding for the draw, Qatar and KSA only had to beat Hong Kong and India in the group round !!!

I know almost nothing about Equestrian (well obviously more than nothing but still nothing comparing to you.) is there any chance for Miss Sohi ?! I just read an interview with Iran Eqestrian Federation president and he was very positive about it. but I learned to not trust them. I can see the current World Ranking where she is not in a good position though.

So the only Iranian cyclist in Tokyo can start both in Road Race and ITT ? what's the point, I would reject the quota and stick with one event to at least finish the road race. and btw when they were writing the rules. they didn't expect much difference between 30th in the ranking and the replacement (in this case Iran) Luxembourg could easily finish 29th instead of 30th if they were good enough. I would be happy if South Korea could qualify in women's Road race (either through ranking or individual ranking) that could let Iran to qualify a female cyclist for the first time ever. unfortunately didn't happen

They are still 'Qatar' but some of their naturalized players are getting old. so maybe not strong as before. still Bahrain almost beat the same 'Qatar' at the Asian Games final. (Qatar won in overtime eventually) I think Bahrain's chance isn't completely zero . for some reasons they always challenge Qatar. but Bahrain didn't look great in this tournament so far. they lost to Korea and almost lost to Iran. still I think the only team in Asia capable of beating Qatar is Bahrain.

Bahrain lost to Korea by 1 goal which eliminated Iran even before the last game. in battle of already eliminated teams Iran almost won the match by a last second goal but those European referees (who were supposed to be good) made a stupid mistake and annulled Iran's goal. TV replay clearly shows the ball went into the net at 29:59. that wasn't important for Iran or Kuwait but very important for Bahrain. now they have to face Qatar in the semis Semifinals: vs vs

I never saw Dominican Republic achieving anything in Beach Volley. but Oman is a top 8 team in Asia regularly. so I assume they are simply better than Dom Rep in this sport.

2nd round 40-10 41-16 36-32 29-26 Qatar and Saudi Arabia are already in the semifinal. surprise surprise. (thanks to the funny draw) in other group all 4 teams are still alive. and even Bahrain is not qualified yet. after beating South Korea I was hoping for a 2nd place finish behind Qatar (to qualify for the Qualification tournament) but that's impossible now. but still they played better than my expectations and what a pity, if it wasn't for some silly mistakes at the end Iran could even win the match. only if we had our complete team here whenever Bahrain had one man less, instead of using the opportunity they tried to rush in attack, turned the ball over and gifted easy goals to Bahrain. at some point I was hoping Bahrain never gets 2min suspension (and I'm not kidding)

Do we know the start list for today semifinals ? or I have to wait few more minutes and watch it match by match ? not a good day for Iran, both Mardani and Rajabi lost to Korea (to different athletes) . and it's kind of weird. all 5 Iranian athletes here lost to South Korea !

yeah I get that but that paragraph comes from the section of "REALLOCATION OF UNUSED QUALIFICATION PLACES" like if someone withdraws the quota. it doesn't mention clearly what happens if the GS winner is already qualified. I know it sounds like that 99% because as you said there is no mention of the quota going to the next ranked athlete in GS but I was looking for something like 100% confirmation.

Are we 100% sure that if the Grand Slam winner is already qualified (top 5 in WR) the quota goes to the #6 in the ranking (and not to #2 in Grand Slam) ? I know the official document sounds like that but still this isn't like a 100% sure thing to me. and the part about re allocation

I was checking the entry list for Taekwondo and I can say half of them are familiar names. mostly national team members. probably not a big surprise because of the nature of this sport which is a martial arts. but meet soldier Tijana Boganovic isn't she too good looking to be a soldier ? she will be more useful as a spy I guess https://results.wuhan2019mwg.cn/index.htm#/participant/athlete/msg?athletecode=TKWWS3212768 Warrant officer Vladislav Larin https://results.wuhan2019mwg.cn/index.htm#/participant/athlete/msg?athletecode=TKWMS3218281 Don Vito Dellaquila https://results.wuhan2019mwg.cn/index.htm#/participant/athlete/msg?athletecode=TKWMS3217190 Tahir Gulec https://results.wuhan2019mwg.cn/index.htm#/participant/athlete/msg?athletecode=TKWMS3218097 Sergeant Edival Pontes https://results.wuhan2019mwg.cn/index.htm#/participant/athlete/msg?athletecode=TKWMS3216592 Junior Sergeant Dmitry Shokin (Uzbek team is exactly their national team) https://results.wuhan2019mwg.cn/index.htm#/participant/athlete/msg?athletecode=TKWMS3217861

oh thanks. perfect. that was great news actually. you never know how important those 10pts can be. but that will also make few changes for other Asian athletes. do you have such ranking for all men and women weights ? I was only focused on 68 and +80 but it would be nice having it for every other weights, I remember there was a Spanish website/blog doing that. can't find it anymore.

oh thanks I didn't have the minor tournament results. yes Brecic still could get points from minor tournaments which he did. Pontes now has a good chance because as you said he still can win 25 more points (G2 event from his own continent doesn't count) no I wish you were right about Hosseini but he has 282.87. I'm going to update the ranking and fix those 2 scores for Pontes and Brecic. Pontes wasn't here too. maybe he is in China for the CISM Games ?! that's G2. but whoever wins the Euro will be in a very good position.

half of them were for "grabbing" I didn't see any kind of grabbing. specially in first period when scored 2 punches ! I mean it's not easy to grab by one hand and punch by other hand !! (because when you score a punch you have to score from the distance , not close range) I'm hearing from official referees that 5 of those cautions were wrong. (of course maybe Iranian refs are biased but we are not talking about 1 or 2 but 5 cautions) yes he was behind at the time (only by 1 point though) but if you watched the match (which you did) he lost focus because of the cautions because he had to change his style to avoid more cautions. of course against such a great athlete like Lee those kind of mistakes will be costly. I also blame our coach for not using his video replay card, specially for both of those punches in first period. he used his card once and it worked. they annulled one of the cautions and they would annul 2-3 more if our coach was smart to use it. but maybe it's easy to say now, it's not a good idea to use your video replay card early in first period. no he is not #2 in Olympic ranking which is different than World Ranking, he is 6th and in my ranking he is 5th. (I calculate my own version of ranking. removing those points WT will remove later) after today the ranking is something like this updated correct ranking Lee 487 Sinden 369 Zhao 364 Abughaush 302 Hosseini 293 Perez 274 Achab 272 Huang 260 Brecic 258 Pontes 249 Denisenko 246 btw do you know why Brecic wasn't here ? injured ? or being smart preparing for the easier tournament in Bari ? from this list almost all of them already won the max 40pts they could collect from G1/G2 events except Pontes (can collect 25pts more), Hosseini (4pts) and Abughaush (10pts) . so in fact there are only 2 events left. the European tournament in Bari and Final GP in Moscow. I expect both Perez and Achab to surpass Hosseini after the European tournament. Hosseini needs to win a big result in Moscow.

2 bronze medals for Iran in first day of GP Sofia. but the only athlete I was worried about lost in the QF. Mirhashem Hosseini got robbed blatantly against the Korean legend Lee Dae-hoon. Mirhashem was leading by something like 10pts almost the entire match but the center ref disqualified him with 10 cautions . at least half of them nonsense calls I don't know why Hosseini is always unlucky. first the denied visa for the worlds and now this (which was at least a silver medal because he had to face another Iranian in SF) now his Olympic qualification is in trouble again. seriously if Iran manages to qualify 2 quotas through ranking by someone else than Hosseini, I would withdraw one of them to make room for Hosseini participating at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers, he is clearly a gold medal chance in Tokyo. looking at 68kg ranking, are already qualified, 2 or maybe 3 spots are still up for grab with only 1 GP left. hopefully Hosseini will take one of those spots.

Results so far 49-14 35-24 28-27 26-21 I always thought if one day, 1) we can gather all of our top players, 2) hire a high level foreign coach, 3) with good preparation, we can win the gold in Asia and compete with 2nd/3rd tier European teams. our handball always misses at least one of these 3 items. this time all of them together half of our players in Europe didn't get released by their clubs (hard to believe that, probably just an excuse for lack of commitment) we have an inexperienced Iranian coach and they just got together and came to Qatar (some players even joined the team 3 days ago) and yet this team managed to beat South Korea !! we didn't beat Korea in past few years even with better squads. this is more than just surprising to me. Iran won't qualify for the Olympics for sure but that win was great.

Well. most people believe what they don't even know. I know lots of people who are just interested to listen to Quran (mostly elderly people) and I'm 100% sure they don't understand a word but still like it. they just like the sound of it. There are even competitions (even international competitions) about Quran Recital, some guys try their whole life to recite Quran in the best way and some of them are really good. people just enjoy listening to them. some of them think even if they listen to Quran their sins will be forgiven. there are some other "weird" things.or for example when someone dies, someone should speak in Arabic in the funeral. nobody understands him but they think that will help his soul ! or when people go to cemetery for their dearests they read two of Quran's Surahs. again without knowing the meaning. it's just accepted by religious people here that Arabic is a sacred language . we use it in some ceremonies without understanding it ! even in our flag there is something written, that's not in our own language, that's in Arabic. "God is great" things changed recently. because of the reasons I explained the new generation (mostly non-religious) has some kind of Arabophobia which is sad and racist PS: of course there are translated versions of Quran as well but in Islam you have to read it in Arabic. and I rarely saw religious people being interested in reading the translated version.

Olympic ranking of course Olympic and World Rankings will be exactly the same on 22 October. They are almost the same right now,

I had never been to Afghanistan, so I don't know the details but based on my understanding yes people in rural areas more speak Pashto and yes in general they speak Dari more. but I assume most of them can speak both. I saw their president sometimes switch between languages in one speech

Afghanistan has 2 official languages Pashto and Farsi-Dari (the dominant one) . Farsi-Dari (Dari Persian) is 90% like our Persian. Pashto isn't really similar. listening to Pashto is like listening to Kurdish, I understand few words but not the sentence.

I can say there are only 2 countries in the world we understand their languages , Afghanistan and Tajikistan. but well that's still Persian of course with some differences . but we also have many different languages in Iran, but I think in past 80 years (or something like that) the government forced everybody to learn Persian at school as the official language. but I think for half of the population (or maybe 30%) Persian is not their mother language. if someone travels to the west of the country, no chance you hear people speak Persian in the streets, it's either Kurdish, Azeri or Arabic. (depends on the region) we also have Turkmeni , Balochi and few more derivation of Persian in North and East of the country but it's only Persian in middle of the country (Tehran and nearby provinces)

Persian and Farsi are 100% the same. if you look closer even those words are almost the same. and no , no insult at all. Do you know people in Egypt call their country "Misr" (we call it Mesr) , this is the same with Persian and Farsi. they are both correct but Persian is more correct for English speakers.