MHSN

you can't fake injury several times, it happened before, no more room for that ! you had a good point here, with this, they are only punishing our own athletes, I don't know why people asking for more "punishment" just because it's Iran ? I never said anybody asks for banning Algeria for example. of course those who made such policy don't care if they IJF or IOC bans Iran or something, people probably don't remember Iran was the only ( am I right ?) country boycotted both 1980 and 1984 Olympics, of course we are not living in 1980s, there is no charismatic leader anymore and they have to justify their actions but they always say "sacrificing a medal is nothing comparing to those sacrificed their lives for the country" and in fact the only sport that matters in Iran is football . that's why the only international organization that can force a serious change in Iran is FIFA, not even UN but FIFA. FIFA did that before in 2006 and is doing it again on another matter, and in a good way. of course Judo is half dead here and if they continue the new policy of not even participating wherever Israel participates, there will be no motivation left for younger athletes to continue this path. in past they would count on luck and the draw but after that letter to IJF they decided to simply not participate. this way this is better to completely shut down Judo here. well that's the question I don't want to know the answer ! at least for now Israel sucks in almost every sport, in other sports they just have to avoid Israel in the first round and Israel usually don't go any further but what if they improve ? I don't know. actually Israel had won only 1 medal in World Taekwondo Championship and that medal happened because their fighter had to face Iran in QF back in 2005 and you know the rest ... btw, that only applies to head to head sports, weightlifting is not included. unless they have to stand on the same podium.

I can tell you here everybody (and I mean everybody) is convinced that Mollaei lost both matches intentionally ! actually I'm starting to think maybe they saw something I didn't notice and maybe I'm wrong and he is such a great actor of course the official news websites are silent about it, they just reported his results, but all of those Persian speaking media outside of Iran are reporting this like Mollaei lost on purpose.

I'm sure she doesn't mind the Olympic quota was the main goal here. she had won a world cup bronze before

Elaheh Ahmadi was expected to win the quota but 17 years old Armina Sadeghian took it instead. she was 8th after the 2nd group of shooters and she was lucky nobody from the last group surpassed her. Iran usually don't replace the shooters, that means no chance for Elaheh Ahmadi unless she tries 50m rifle 3 positions .

It seems we will have a "mixed team event" in Tokyo as exhibition . if you remember WT proposed that to IOC but that didn't work for them. but they are serious about getting it into the next Olympics in Paris. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/jiangsu/wuxi/2019-08/27/content_37506098.htm apparently we will have 4 teams in Tokyo, China qualified by winning the World Cup team Championships few days ago, there will be more qualification events for the next 3 teams. if you wonder how it works you can watch this. this is kind of funny because you can switch your player after minimum 20 seconds and if you send a male/female athlete your opponent "has" to send the same gender. obviously a country like Iran prefers to use the male fighters more, Iran lost the final to China and according to the Iranian coach, their "bottom" stopped working somewhere in middle of the match and they could not replace the player at will, they had to play however China wanted it (even though they were down already by a big margin) personally I'm against any kind of mixed team event and beside that this tag team idea is really not that good, players can easily get injured , but well that's fun to watch I have to admit. just "fun" beside that it was good to see Kimia Alizadeh back in action after a while and after something like 1000 surgeries. even though she gave up 9pts at once when the score was tied (3 head kick + 1 caution for falling + 5 for knockdown count)

I also personally don't think he lost on purpose but his reaction after giving up the first waza-ari was like he doesn't care anymore. but before that yeah he was even close to win by ippon couple of times. Judo is about seconds and moments and poor guy Mollaei had lots of things on his mind today. that probably justifies his lack of action in those seconds between Maisuradze's first and second scores. I heard some stories which confirm what I think myself, his coach being absent for the SF and then coming back for the bronze medal match can give a hint about what happened behind the scene.

I'm quite sure Mollaei tried his best and he just lost to Casse. and interestingly for me his coach wasn't there. I feel something happened behind the scene. we will know about it very soon. Edit: Mollaei also lost the bronze, this one was a bit dubious, and his coach was there unlike the semifinal. the funny thing is everybody here thinks he lost both matches intentionally. which is surely not true.

Maybe because the loser of 2nd semifinal has to fight the first bronze medal match , they changed the order to give him/ her more recovery time

Afghanistan is not suspended or anything, there are Afghan athletes here representing Afghanistan, I don't know which athlete you are talking about but that's probably a refugee or something. of course they can do whatever they want. specially if IJF sponsors them to participate here they don't want to upset IJF even if they personally don't like Israel.

this is weird but even for the women's semifinal they revised the order. but still it doesn't change much unless Abdelaal surprises everybody. I really don't see that happening. Casse himself is pretty good though. you asked the question about Egypt. I know for sure the following countries don't face Israel anywhere, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria and Kuwait. I know Saudi Arabia and Bahrain had the same policy even few months ago, I don't know where they stand right now, (UAE is not in the list anymore, their girl fought Israel in this tournament and obviously lost it) I know Egypt and Jordan don't have this policy. but I have no idea about other middle eastern countries, but I assume most of them still don't face Israeli athletes. I think we can find at least 10 more countries with the same policy. probably Tunisia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, maybe even Libya, Sudan, Bangladesh. but you rarely see those countries in non-continental competitions, so we never know.

I don't know if the athlete himself likes it or not, but Egypt don't have such policy. they fought against Israel before. even though for example one of them didn't shake hand ! Mollaei's SF will be before Muki, I can guess he will lose the SF, it will be risky to win and wait for the Egyptian to do something, his chance looks less than 10% to me. and Mollaei won't try for bronze too, he won't attend the medal ceremony with Israel being the gold medalist. in situations like this I always stupidly hoped for a miraculous change of policy in the last minute but now I'm old enough to know it's not going to happen. I feel really sorry for Mollaei

my reaction when Fujiwara made a mistake in last 10 seconds. De Wit and Albayrak are also out. all seeded athletes in bottom half except for guess who, Muki ! it seems even if Mollaei wins his own matches, (which is a big IF, considering his 3rd and 4rd round opponents) he has to lose/forfeit somewhere unless someone stops Muki who is in a great shape.

It seems Czech's mission here was only to beat Iran and ruin Iran's chance of a medal they lost to Belarus today while other Group B teams managed to win the eight finals, even Bulgaria beat Brazil. Russia vs Italy in the final looks very possible now. Quarterfinals vs vs vs vs

8 minutes of extra time ! sorry for Tajikistan, they lost both bronze medal matches.

it was supposed to be between ISR and ALG I wonder if anybody wants to scream about banning this or that. or making up phantom interviews ?! or sending letters to IJF asking/ordering them to do something ? guess not, nobody will even notice this. the exact same thing happened in another sport just 2 weeks ago and of course nobody noticed. that's only for Iran while something like 10 other countries or maybe more have the same policy (which I believe is extremely stupid but that's not the point here)

now I know why some (or maybe all ?) Brazilian users here didn't want this guy to be elected. Trump is quite a gentleman comparing to him. politics aside I respect someone like Macron who at least married someone he loves (even if she is 100 years older) much more than all those rich guys who marry several times with younger women and everybody knows those women are with them only because of their money and their position.

only few quotas for Asian athletes. I was hoping to China to at least qualify in men's C1 1000m. that could give Iran a good chance to qualify in Asia. but China failed therefore I guess there is absolutely no chance for Iran to qualify anything in this sport to Tokyo.

Rashnonejad only lasted 3 minutes in Tokyo. he won silver in Asian Champs (which is a big achievement considering the level of Judo in Asia) in his first year with Iran national team but then left Iran with some funny claims like "they were mean to me in Judo federation" apparently nowadays that's good enough for being a refugee despite living (or whatever else) in the Netherlands he still has to participate under "IJF" name, not a loss for the NED. I highly doubt he ever achieves anything for any NOC.

well I couldn't see the pic at first and I thought Haddadi did something. but Taftian ?! that's really surprising. everybody gave up on him after the Jakarta disaster. I assume that means the Olympic qualification. the standard was 10.05. good for him,

it wasn't that much "yayy". he is a world bronze medalist from 2017 in the same event. going to the final was the very least expected from him.

I opened that link last night and it was different than current version, still that phantom interview wasn't there. still it was nonsense because the article was saying both Mollaei and Mohammadi-B are withdrawing. I don't know if they had an earlier version with that phantom interview or not. but their last night version was also total nonsense. unfortunately I didn't save the last night version but I saw that myself, so if they can make up such a nonsense story about Mollaei, they can make up quotes too. I know the situation VERY WELL and threatening family and even himself was never included. since the 1979 revolution only one Iranian athlete actually faced Israel and only because he didn't know about such policy, it was only few years after the revolution and at first newspapers here even considered it a good news (beating Israel in wrestling) but when the news went to "big guys" they called the whole team back from France. and suspended the team managers. since then it never happened so nobody knows the exact penalty for "facing Israel" but I can assume it will be only expelling from the national team. This is a documentary made by Al Jazeera about 3 young Iranian wrestlers, one of them had to face Israel in World Youth Champs, you can see how the doctor is telling him to withdraw. I have to say the translation is not 100% accurate but you can get the point. even though after all the didn't have to withdraw and the Israeli kid lost the match before him

I can't see the part you quoted in that link. where is the source for that specifically ? the whole thing is nonsense, because Mollaei was never supposed to withdraw, it was only about Mohammadi-B. and yes they forced him to withdraw and I explained it in details here, which is still very sad, I know how much he loves Judo. (his dad died from heart attack while watching one of his matches) Mollaei and his coach are in Japan for few days, so how he can give an interview about "extremely sad about the decision as he was well prepared and considered the favourite" but well yeah. this is about Iran, you always can add more things to the story and make it more interesting I said this so many times before, Iranian athletes can't face Israel in head to head matches. (they were in the same race in World Canoeing Champs and nobody withdrew) if they do, they will lose their place in the national team.(most probably forever) that's it. anything else is nonsense and exaggeration . and the Iranian government always award them prize money for that.

what the hell, where exactly he said such things ? did you call him yourself ?

2018 World Bronze medalist Mohammad Mohammadi-Barimanloo announced retirement on his instagram. (out of anger and disappointment) because he was told they are not going to send him to Japan for the World Championships. the official reason is visa issue !! but according to himself this is just a lie and there are "other reasons" behind that. he didn't say what are those reasons but that was obvious. he says he was busy in past few days about that but the final answer was no, Iran was supposed to send only a 2-man team now it's just one. I really feel terrible for our Judokas. until this year they at least could try their chance for not getting the Israel draw. but the new policy after that stupid letter to IJF is "not participating whenever Israel is there" which only limits them to continental tournaments this is almost no difference than suspension. this is self suspension which is extremely stupid., I guess IJF is happy now. they can still continue to stupidly claim they reached agreement. now I don't care if they ban or something. the outcome will be the same. our Judo is cursed, If that was up to me I would ban any kind of activity of this sport. problem solved for everybody.

wrestling is not like Tennis. some top wrestlers prefer only 1 or 2 competitions per year. it's based on 2018 World Champs, 2019 continental champs and 4 selected international tournaments. for example in that 86kg weight our guy who is the clear favorite for the gold, is ranked 3rd because he didn't wrestle in Asian Champs. only went to one of those international tournaments. that result + his 2018 Worlds result was only good enough for 3rd place in the ranking which I believe he doesn't care because the only wrestler in the world capable of challenging him is unseeded and can be anywhere in the draw. as I said, the best thing about being seeded is receiving a bye in the first round. beside that it's not a sure thing if it helps. I see only in 3 weights (74, 97 and 125) all of gold medal favorites in top 4. for other weights there is at least one gold medal favorite being unseeded