MHSN

At the end of wrestling competition Iran won only 5 gold medals, not a great result but still OK , the level of wrestling competition was very high here, for example our 86kg wrestler (who is an Olympic Champion himself) had to beat an Olympic gold medalist and an Olympic silver medalist to win the gold medal !

24 gold medals so far, I guess Iran will finish on something like 35. only 2 days left but I think Iran will dominate Wushu and Zurkhaneh events. not our A team in Wushu here but I guess even this team is good enough to win most of the gold medals.

I assume nobody here knows anything about this sport of "Zurkhaneh" this is a traditional Iranian sport, very boring ! actually the original sport was much more boring but they made it a bit westernized. Iran will win all gold medals here unless they want to let other countries win something intentionally just to help promoting the sport in the world.

Looks like Rouhani is winning,  even the hardliners almost accepted that, not official yet though , too early for celebration !

the turnout was also very high, A record for the city of Tehran and also for Iranian abroad ! in Istanbul or some cities in US people had to wait 4-5 hours to vote in a weekday (Friday is holiday in Iran) apparently people understood the importance of this election as I said before.

I don't know about the rules in Canada, but they didn't let Iranians to vote in Canada , some Iranians even drove few hours to the US to vote in Buffalo ! with half million Iranians living in Canada , the Canadian government should found a solution for that. Iran has no relation with US for 4 decades and still even under Trump there were 55 different extraterritorial polling booths in the country.

Alamian brothers in table tennis final TT is one of my favourite sports and was one of the few sports that I cared more about and glad to see them beating Chinese naturalized players from Qatar, Azerbaijan and Turkey back to back. I wish we could have top players of Egypt and Nigeria to have a complete tournament but still that was very good for Alamian brothers.

3 minutes ago, DaniSRB said:

aha

 

and how much function of president really matter when there is supreme leader?

Also, what people now think of having supreme leader after so much time passed since it was founded?

it matters a lot, the supreme leader might have the absolute power over everything but it doesn't mean he uses it for every single case. in past few years he used his power only in few limited cases. of course few things are off limit like nuclear program (even though Rouhani changed that) supporting Bashar Asaad's regime, supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, hatred toward Israel. and etc.

who knows ?! we never had an election about having/not having that position. people once vote for the "Islamic Republic" 37 years ago and they think that's enough forever ! people who vote for Rouhani (or reformists in general) usually don't believe in this system and wants change (but in a non-violent way) at the moment, in 2017 there is no charismatic person to become the next leader. if he dies tomorrow I have absolutely no idea who will be next ! when Khomeini (the founder of IR) died 11 year after the Islamic revolution, they made Khameneyi the leader and at the time they made him something like god (for their religious supporters) but Iran nowadays is a different country. and with all these things internet. social media etc this will be really hard for them to "create" another "Supreme Leader" if he dies without having a serious candidate there is chance they might go after having a "council" instead of single person as a leader. at least that can be a small step into the right direction to get rid of that position one day.

Raeisi was relatively unknown 4-5 months ago. which means his past is almost clear for the people. (as I said he ordered mass execution long time ago but it seems people don't care much about that since they were MEK terrorists.)    Sepah (IRGC) and other extremist groups tried their best to make him somebody. that makes me worry. he might be their chosen one. but he has to win this election otherwise it will be very hard to later "sell" him as a leader.

you guys answer short questions but seriously they need long answers  but I really tried to be brief 

6 minutes ago, Gianlu33 said:

Well, Italian media don't say nothing about Iran election, really. I need to use some specifical site that speak about election in the world  Btw, what do you expect from this election?

pfff, Iranian elections are highly unpredictable. you never can trust Opinion polls here. none of them are accurate AT ALL. 4 years ago Rouhani had no chance when he started his campaign but one debate and what he said during that changes everything and later reformist leader (Ex-president Khatami) asked other reformist candidates to withdraw for him and put his support behind Rouhani and he won the election by 51%.

I live in Tehran and from what I see (work, family, street campaigns etc) almost everybody will either not vote or vote for Rouhani but I know Iran is not just Tehran. people are more educated and less religious here but this doesn't apply to small cities.

educated people usually won't vote or vote for the reformists so it depends on the turnout. low turnout always helps the conservatives. they always have their fixed number of votes from religious/poor people here. Rouhani's economical results were not brilliant in past 4 years (specially with US somehow cheating by bringing other sanction after the nuclear deal) maybe that hurts him during the election.

PS: and there is always chance for a replay of what happened in 2009. rigging the election. I know so many people myself who never voted and will never vote again but that time they all came to vote to get rid of the disastrous Mahmoud, we were sure about the outcome but then the next morning ... that was shocking. I believe and i hope they learned their lesson to not do that mistake again.

Just now, DaniSRB said:

are all candidates always also clergy?

no, actually the other 4 approved candidates weren't "clergy", 3 of them withdrew (to support either Rouhani ro Raeisi) and the last one said himself he will vote for Rouhani !  just for info he is a former IOC member.

and Mahmoud "the disaster" Ahmadinejad wasn't a clergy

1 hour ago, Gianlu33 said:

I hope that Rouhani will win. I don't like Raisi, he was too close Sayyid Ali Khamenei's policy. Both are pro USA and have an open foreign policy (well, Raisi want close all relationships whit Israel) and they have two very different economical plan, but i don't like neither. Good luck Iran, tomorrow you will write your history! 

well I don't know much about what non-Iranian media say or believe about the candidates but Raeisi is a new version of Ahmadinejad, less stupid but more brutal. and he is not interested in open foreign policy, all extremists support him and we "in Iran" know how they want to deal with the world. he may say nice things during the candidacy but that's just populism. he is a judge and was involved in mass execution of political prisoners 30 years ago and he never said he is sorry or something about that.

just one thing to know Raeisi better, he is from Mashhad, a big religious city in northeast of Iran. he and his father in law run the city. actually they own the city and because of their view, no concert is allowed in that specific city !!

there are rumors that Raeisi is a candidate to become the next leader after Khameneyi. if he wins the election and Khameneyi dies during his presidency he most probably will become the next leader and that will be disastrous. but if he loses he will lose that opportunity as well and will go back to his cave forever.

VERY important election in Iran tomorrow. I think only 2009 election had the same importance. with Khameneyi being old and sick he may not last another 4 years which gives more importance to this election.

The atmosphere is also very similar to 2009 (not as passionate though, that was something unique which will never repeat) very polarized , now it's officially a two way race and won't go to the second round. I just hope the outcome won't be the same as 2009, that was one of the worst days of country's history.

Rouhani is weaker now since he couldn't deliver all he promised 4 years ago but if Raeisi wins then God bless our country the way all hardliners/extremists put their support behind him makes me worry, he was relatively unknown 5 months ago.

2 hours ago, bestmen said:

 

and stop playing like if you have the best team in the world , you learnt the volleyball recently you have no history in this sport

 

 

and when I said  that ?  actually even a 4th place finish wlil be good for this U21 team against the seniors.

and you also stop saying nonsense about B/C/Z teams. there are people who can google and find out the truth

7 minutes ago, bestmen said:

 

only 2 players  were from the national team the rest team B

but they will qualify to the 2nd round

LOL, You know I never believe this kind of excuses "that was our B team, this was our Z team" unless I check it myself. and I did this time

I compared the roster of Algeria team in these 2 tournaments

http://worldoqt.mexico.2016.men.fivb.com/en/teams/alg-algeria/team_roster

https://baku2017results.azureedge.net/2017/05/15/09/08/48/4ec56a5c-2782-4956-8ece-c073b9724580/VBM400000_33 9.3.pdf

this is exactly the same roster, unless you tell me Algeria sent B team to the Olympic qualifier !

you know when you call a team "B" you should have another team training/competing somewhere else.

21 hours ago, bestmen said:

tomorrow the match vs  

we will see the level of this new team

no good for Algeria in volleyball, the Iranian team was U21

41 minutes ago, Griff88 said:

I have to say that the future of ISG is already dark..

 

2021 in Turkey will be same pattern and same thing. Less countries will be interested, the naturalized athletes smash the countries which are serious, competition only limited to 5-6 countries and in the end no one really cares in hosting them anymore...

yes I also heard the same things from the Iranian officials, after Turkey they are not sure if they can find host for the next editions !

with more than 50 countries , only few are winning medals and there are so many naturalized athletes for Turkey and Azerbaijan .

36 minutes ago, Griff88 said:

Most of their best athletes are doing intensive training in Malaysia for SEA Games.

yep true, still they sent a good team in Karate, and won nothing surprisingly !

and without Malaysia in the list, Iran just won a gold medal in Diving !

There is a big big gap between Azerbaijan / Turkey and the rest, I wonder if they are this good ? or they just took this even more serious ?! or maybe because they set the event for their benefit, because for example there are some Paralympics event here, only events with possibility of gold medals for Azerbaijan !

today was a better day for Iran with 5 gold medals, I think Iran will most probably finish 3rd place. some results so far were a bit disappointing specially in Karate and Shooting. they won 4 gold medals in shooting but there were few more events that Iranians topped the qualifiers by a margin but were terrible in the final ! and in Karate our men's kumittee team was disastrous with only 2 medals and 1 gold !

looking forward for the wrestling competition, Azerbaijan didn't send A team to Euro and saved them for here. this will be an interesting battle between Iran and Azerbaijan and they are not alone, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are also sending some of their A wrestlers.

Iran's squad for the World Championship in Korea (only the men's team)

54kg: Armin Hadipour

58kg: Farzan Ashourzadeh

63kg: Mirhashem Hosseini

68kg: Abolfazl Yaghoubi

74kg: Masoud Hajji-Zavvareh

80kg: Pouria Erfanian

87kg: Saeid Rajabi

+87kg: Sajjad Mardani

world champion Mehdi Khodabakhshi had to fight in the trials to make the world team but he didn't show up and lost his chance therefore.

After a very bad 1st day, Iran qualified 3 wrestlers to the final today to secure the team freestyle title one more time. I believe all 3 of them will be strong favorites for the gold later today. and if Rashidi wins the bronze it means none of our freestyle wrestlers will return home without a medal.

except one wrestler this is completely our B team while almost all other countries send their top wrestlers here, I guess our results were OK in general. but I was expecting more from some of them. Atri and Nassiri were disappointing.

I was looking at the start lists, it seems there is a good chance for Iran to dominate most of the shooting events ! never thought one day we will be favorite in this sport anywhere

Karate competitions will start tomorrow and the level is quite good as expected. I expect few gold medals tomorrow in Karate and Shooting.

btw the official website is really bad !

12 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Why are we already at the semi-finals of the handball when 12 May is the starting date?  

َApparently they want that venue for another sport (table tennis) for the 2nd week of the Games.

btw we are having the draw for Boxing and the entry list for weightlifting, the level is higher than what I was expecting. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are also here after missing the 2013 event in Indonesia

After a disastrous 1st day, Japan just dominated the 2nd day. perfect for them, they are in all 5 finals. 3 Greco and 2 women

Iran also qualified 2 more to the finals and with Abdevali in bronze medal match, they already secured the team title. both Korea and Kazakhstan didn't shine today.

Asian Champs is not usually a high level tournament (comparing to Asian Games) but I see this year most countries take it serious, so many Olympians are wrestling here. I'm glad with our results here, this is not our complete A team, because of the Islamic Solidarity Games they are sending half of the A team to Baku. half of them are here and for example our 75kg guy is #4 in Iran .

from what I see the officiating was also very good (at least not biased) even the host nation India didn't benefit from the calls.

Iran finished the 1st day of Asian Greco-Roman Championships with 3 golds and a bronze in 5 weights. not a bad start considering the fact some of these wrestlers are pretty new to international competition and we are in rebuilding phase. our whole team in the Olympics just retired (or at least took a year off)

interesting fact that out of 10 finalists in 1st day, they were all from 3 countries, Iran, Korea and Kazakhstan ! great for Korea since most of their wrestlers are new. while Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and China are bringing almost their A team here.

I was more impressed by our 98kg guy Salehizadeh, he beat 3 "good wrestlers" before the final.

6 hours ago, Dolby said:

Didnt UWW categorically deny that he has not failed any dope test. Also, any clarification regarding when exactly did he fail the test and if he will be losing any medals?

Good point, but his ban started from April 2017, out of competition test. So I assume this is a new case, they denied rumors about his 2012 samples last year 

this is the list of UWW sanctioned athletes

https://unitedworldwrestling.org/sites/default/files/media/document/170428_list_of_antidoping_rules_violations_website.pdf

there is a very familiar name at the end of the list ! 2012 Olympic champion and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Toghrul Asgarov ! he is banned for a year until April 2018.

21 hours ago, mrv86 said:

 

I didn't realize it at first, but the Americas draw has also some geographic criteria; the exception is Panama playing with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay

Apparently  I was wrong about the 2nd round, they will merge Group A and C together for both Asia and Americas. if that's true we will get Australia, Philippines, Japan or Chinese Taipei in 2nd round, much much different than that all west Asian groups.

Draw for 2019 World Cup qualification

looks like they separated Asia into West and East zones and the west zone is much easier. this is a bit disapponiting, with 7+1 slots available for Asia/Pacific, we would qualify anyway but I would like to see teams like Australia, New Zealand, China or Korea playing in Tehran . right now we got Qatar, Kazakhstan and Iraq in 1st round not interesting at all.

Bronze medal

I think that was their best game in the whole tournament against a very strong team, our guys missed A LOT of chances in 3rd period, the gap could be bigger. this is only our 2nd medal in FIFA competitions (after Futsal bronze last year)

btw that was also the first ever medal for the Asian teams.

hard luck for Italy,