MHSN

I like to see such a competition but winning the gold medal comes first. it's not like we can win more than 10 golds in the Olympics. Moradi is one of our few Olympic gold medal chances. but maybe this is too early to talk about the Olympics. Moradi is not young, let's see if he can keeps his current shape for the Olympics after all !

oh yeah the website sucks but I got some results from Iran Karate federation page, they say the Iranian girl is back in repechage since Yin made it to the final.

I hope so because Tian Tao is so unpredictable. you never can say "OK this is too much for him he won't lift this" I know in China they care more about winning the gold medal. so I assume they will pick someone with a good chance for gold (but also possible to win nothing) over a safe silver medal. during 2014 AG, where Tian Tao was almost unknown at the time, Rostami finished his competition with 380kg and already shaking hands with others as the gold medalist. Tian "after failing 211" tried 218 (equal to WR at the time) and made it. Rostami's face was funny at the time, he collapsed on his chair. you never can say never with Tian Tao. he almost pulled out something like that in Rio 2016 but this time Rostami had one more attempt saved to come back and win the gold.

of course I know that's why I said he will be tougher next time. btw what's his chance to get selected for the Olympics ? I know China can send only 4 but I assume he is a strong candidate to fill one of those 4 slots. or maybe China decides to send 4 weightlifters in 4 lightest weights , that's what I hope for

since the official livescore is a mess, this is the list of finals so far Men's 67kg: FIGUEIRA VINICIUS vs DACOSTA STEVEN Men's 75kg: ASGARI BAHMAN vs BUSA LUIGI Women's 61kg: YIN XIAOYAN vs PREKOVIC JOVANA

Derafshipour had couple wins on Hantei but he ran out of luck in semifinal against France. he will fight for bronze. so far 4 out of 4 made it to the medal round in men's kumite, 2 for gold ,2 for bronze. the last one is the defending World Champion Amir Mehdizadeh. but the female team is really bad here. 3 out of 4 lost in the first round ! only Alipour could go to the QF where she lost to China and since China made it to the final she will be alive in repechage. still not a great chance for her.

I didn't expect Tian Tao to really challenge Moradi but he did. I think Moradi wasn't totally focused today. he should made that 237kg but 3 gold medals and 3 WRs. this is a great result. but this guy Tian will be tougher next time, Sohrab better more prepared.

hmmm, he could lift more if he wouldn't miss that 2nd attempt because of a technical mistake. he was definitely capable of much more. but gold medal in snatch and world record. can't ask for more

what a mistake by Russian coaches, they forgot to change the weight and Klimonov had to come and lift only 1kg more than his 2nd attempt ! I remember such thing happened once for Oleg Chen.

he never took side, his attitude was like "whoever is the coach that's not my business I go train with him" and he wasn't a big name at the time, actually out of our 6 weightlifters in London 2012 he was the only one didn't win a medal. actually he bombed out in a humiliating way.

he is indeed such a nice guy. there were (and still are) so many questions about his positive test . there were some issues inside our WL federation at the time. if you remember all of our top weightlifters boycotted the national team after the 2012 Olympics and Moradi was the only member of that 2012 dream team who joined the NT and probably that was the price he had to pay for that. he had a poor result in that 2013 Asian Champ. probably one of the worst results of his career. it doesn't make sense if he was on drugs so many people still think he was framed, as well as Saeid Alihosseini back in 2009 that's why I always support these two guys. by framed I don't mean IWF or anybody else but some corrupt people inside the Iran WL federation.

Sohrab will start with a modest 180kg in snatch,(which is a correct decision) I was thinking if he was Armenian (or if he was Rostami) he would start with 200kg

Bahman Askari goes to the final against Luigi Busa who beat Rafael Aghayev in other semifinal

sorry you can't ! that's all WKF offers for the preliminary round

Askari is in the semifinal after beating Japan.by Hantei which guarantees a medal round match for him. I hope he can go further but he was lucky in the first round. being down 1-0 against a guy from Sweden with only 3 seconds left but scored ippon and won it 3-1. Rozita Alipour is also still alive after 3 wins, but the Asian Games champion Chinese girl (who beat Alipour in the final) is in her pool so I don't have high hope for her.

the number of positive tests for Iran is between 10 and 20. so Iran can qualify 2 male and 2 female for Rio. while they started women's weightlifting but this is toooo early for them to even think about the qualification. and believe me our federation is very stupid to have a long term plan like that, they made so many mistakes like this. even here they made a mistake and 3 weightlifters (at least one of them was a clear medal chance ) missed the competition because they didn't know they have to register names at least 3 months before the competition (for doping reasons etc) . I strongly doubt they know the details of qualification system. I will try to contact some of those missing weightlifters to make sure they know the rules. I believe it will be Moradi and Alihosseini for Tokyo but still 2 years is a long time and who knows what will happen. PS: Sohrab Moradi almost missed Rio because of another stupid mistake. instead of 2 yeasr, he served almost 30 months ban for his doping case and only made it to Rio because of special permission from Ajan himself to let him participate at the Pan-Am Championship.

yeah but this year is also very important for the Olympic qualification points. there are 3 windows of 6 months and weightlifters have to set at least one big result in each one of those windows. I'm already worried about our weightlifters who missed this competition. I wonder if they know the rules or not. specially for Alihosseini he is probably the only one with a realistic chance of beating Talakhadze.

even his PB is not probably good enough for that. Talakhadze is setting World Record year by year but Russian team wasn't good so far. some of them was in Group B which is disastrous for Russia. even Okulov won the gold yetesrday because the level was very poor. maybe being banned for 2 years affected them too much.

there is no doubt that Armenian weightlifters/coaches acted very dumb here but in their defense, only 1kg was separating gold,silver and bronze medalists yesterday. he was needed 212 for silver. and 213 for the gold. even if I was in his place I would try for 213 to win the whole thing.

he has a chance for medal but I don't think his chance is too big, don't forget Ruslan Albegov here. also Turmandize and Seim will fight for a medal here. I think the race is wide open for silver and bronze. even though Djangabaev was very good in Jakarta despite finishing bronze behind Salimi and Alihosseini (and as you said none of them are here ) and I think he is favorite for silver for here. even though we don't know about Albegov's current shape. but he used to be very good.

so at the end of the day, Ganjzadeh in the final against Germany and Poursheib will fight for bronze vs Kazakhstan. I was expecting more but this is kumite, nothing is guaranteed. I hope both can repeat their 2016 medals (gold for Ganjz and bronze for Poursheib) but what a disastrous day for Iranian girls. both lost in the 1st round. Zangeneh lost to Cuba !

Poursheib just beat the host Karateka in his opening match, next match will be interesting against USA, but that American guy Kamran Madani is actually Iranian considering the Olympic qualification, Poursheib is in the same weight as Ganjzadeh , so I care less about Olympics qualification for him. for him only winning a world medal matters. but there is an Israeli guy not far from Poursheib. hope someone takes care of him soon.

Yes, the software automatically adds 1kg to the previous lift . beside that coaches can change in twice.

It seems World Standards in non-Olympic weights will stand for a while. some of them probably forever. that was a poor level. finally a medal for Russia. which was gold but even Okulov was way way behind his own records at 85kg ! and here with 4 extra kilos he lifted less ! Mendez was very disappointing. maybe last year was just an accident. last year he wasn't that far from breaking the World Record

Yeay Ganjzadeh in the final