MHSN

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.

I can say I understand the basic Arabic (probably more than just the basics) but that doesn't apply to everybody here. yes everybody has to learn some Arabic (in a very low level) at school but then almost everybody forgets it right after the school. (I was a good student and still remember everything and probably even learned more) if you turn your TV in Iran and switch channels, 100% sure you will find at least 1-2 channels showing something in Arabic but it doesn't mean people understand it most of religious people just listen to Quran without understanding a word. but beside that, we have Arabic speaking Iranians, I think for 2 million people Arabic is their first language and Persian comes second.

no idea as you said it's unique, as far as II know ( and I can be wrong) the closest language to Kurdish is Persian and still Persian is not even close. I can assume Kurdish probably has the same roots as Persian. PS: I think I told you guys in another thread that there is no such a thing as "Farsi" for you guys English speakers. Farsi is the word Persian in Persian language. I mean we call it Farsi but you shouldn't

They speak their own language which is Kurdish, totally different than Arabic, also different than Persian. when I'm listening to Kurdish I understand some words but I don't understand the sentence , I think the numbers are the same as Persian at least my closest friend at college was Kurdish and whenever he met another Kurdish guy at university while walking or something they would switch to Kurdish and I had absolutely no idea what they are talking about they are too proud of their language, which I totally understand and respect and when a Kurdish-Iranian speak Persian I can easily understand because of the accent.

I can recognize Davit Khutsishvili here, so the other guy is Yusubov (AZE), that's 80kg final probably, didn't notice he is a bit hairy in live coverage. lol yeah it looks like rolling but that's just a takedown and the Azeri trying to avoid giving up exposure (which means the end in this sport unlike normal wrestling) never saw a gay porn movie, so I have no idea here

From what I saw, I didn't see a single "hairy" guy and there is no "rolling" in beach wrestling, you lose a point even if your knee touches the sand, there is no par-terre. it's a combination of Sumo, normal wrestling and Judo (minus ne-waza) btw when IOC once dropped wrestling from the Olympics program. FILA/UWW genius idea to make wrestling "attractive" was to remove singlets in Greco-Roman and make everybody wrestle half naked.

That was an interesting documentary but very one-sided. I know a lot of injustice happened for Kurdish people, in Iraq, in Turkey in Iran and Syria. We always hear the story of they defeated ISIS (which is a myth) but it wasn't like they helped anybody. actually they crawled back to their own region when ISIS was taking over half of Iraq and Syria. their reaction was "we don't care, they are not our enemy" they only came to fight ISIS because they had to. because ISIS was coming for them. and they should stop counting on USA (or any other country) to do something for them. where was USA when Saddam dropped chemical bombs on them and killed thousands of innocent souls ? and from where Saddam got those bombs ? of course they gave Saddam those bombs to use it against Iran (which he did) but he also killed lots of Kurdish people in process. this Turkey/Kurds conflict created lots of discussions here in Iran as well. we have lots of Kurds and Azeris living here , obviously they take side in this conflict. personally I don't know what to say because while Turkey's attack hurt the innocent civilians (which is terrible and they should stop it immediately) but they also have the right to defend themselves against the terrorists, how come USA can fly oceans and invade 2 countries for that and Turkey can't invade 30 km next to its borders ? based on my own experiences with Iranian Kurds most of them consider themselves Iranian first, but an independent Kurdistan will create chaos even in Iran, some of those lands you see in that map aren't only for Kurds. there are other ethnics living there as well. nowadays people move inside the country and marry someone from another ethnic group. you can't draw a line and say people in the left are 100% Kurds and people on the right are 100% not Kurds. btw things are messy in this region. and I think there is no solution for some of these conflicts. I think the only one benefits from this is Bashar Asad, Kurds have no other option to go back to him. (probably that's what Turkey wants too)

and it seems Iran finally gave up trying which is a good news to me.

Our only wrestler here won the gold medal quite easily I think he was our only gold medal chance. pity Iran didn't qualify more in beach wrestling. it could be easily more gold medals as I said beach wrestling is active in Iran, we have beach wrestling specialists unlike other countries. . beach soccer team will play Italy for the bronze. so it will be 2 or 3 medals for Iran in general. not bad considering our small delegation. I watched some events today, the women's beach tennis final was very controversial with lights went out exactly at Italy's match point when the Italian girl was ready to smash it for the win Italy won the gold eventually though.