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Four members of Iranian weightlifting team denied visa by US embassy in Dubai ! two weightlifters and two officials, Ayoub Mousavi and Saleh Cheraghi both Asian silver medalists from 2017. fortunately all of our stars will be there in US. here is the list of those who went to Dubai for visa. because of the long visa process they can't add anybody else to the list. the Iranian federation is trying to solve the issue with the help of IWF and the US NOC, but they will probably fail. 69: Majid Askari 85: Kianoush Rostami, Saleh Cheraghi, Ali Miri, Masoud Chatraei 94: Sohrab Moradi, Ayoub Mousavi 105: MohammadReza Barari, Ali Hashemi, Alireza Soleimani +105: Behdad Salimi, Saeid Alihosseini, Homayoun Teymouri with all those countries missing the competition, most of Iranian weightlifters will be favorite for the medal. if Mousavi misses the tournament, they have no other option to bring Askari (probably the only one without a chance) , you can't send more than 2 weightlifters per weight, the most interesting name in this list is Saeid Alihosseini, weightlifting community remembers him very well, he is still the world junior record holder. he had some crazy numbers in training 8 years ago. something like 215+270=485 ! but he got a life ban (later reduced to 12 years) for his 2nd doping test. apparently according to new rules his ban is reduced to 8 years and he is clear to participate, nobody knows about his current shape .they kept it like a secret.

IRAN Faramarz Aslani - Age Ye Rooz (If One Day)

the same ? in term of winning medals you mean probably ! let's say why not Poland ? Szarmiak and Zielinski brothers say hello in past 6-7 years Iran had almost 1 positive test per year (last time 2014) which is still bad but nothing comparing to others. and actually Iranians never failed a drug test in a major competition, mostly because they test weightlifters in the national camp regularly before the major competitions, because of the costs they can't do that for all athletes and all competitions of course I don't deny what we had with our Bulgarian coach long time ago but everything has changed since 2009 and because of the past record Iranian weightlifters are under IWF/WADA out of competition tests so many times per year.

This is a big news. that was the right decision, I'm glad to not see our country in this list ! we had a bad record in this case but at least in past few years they took it serious. even though advanced doping with higher technology doesn't exist in Iran, so if an Iranian uses something he will get caught soon and not 4 years later ! this will improve our results in the World Champs even though since USA is hosting the event and with the travel ban I'm not sure if we can even participate ! our athletes are already in Dubai for visa things.

Guys you can count me too

We had 13 finals today afternoon , Iranians won 9 out of those 13 possible gold medals, 6 of them in Greco-Roman wrestling ! positive surprise here, because while this is our B team (2nd placers in our national trials). some of our Asian rivals like Uzbekistan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan etc. brought their top wrestlers. this is unbelievable that this year our Greco wrestlers got better results than freestyle in almost every competitions ! hard to believe since our depth in freestyle in 10 times bigger and better ! Iran also won the futsal gold today in style. no surprise we brought our very best team here ! but Hossein Vafaei lost the snooker final to China with only few events left for tomorrow, Iran will finish 3rd in medal table for sure. with 35 gold medals : 31 for men and 4 for women Wrestling 9 Pahlavani wrestling 3 Alysh 1 Snooker 1 Futsal 1 Athletics 1 Ju-Jitsu 1 Kickboxing 5 Muaythai 3 Kurash 1 Taekwondo 7 Weightlifting 1 Cycling 1

well they have different reasons for that, USA doesn't want another war inside the war against ISIS. Iraq doesn't want to lose parts of the country. but for Iran and Turkey this is mostly for security concerns. One day the Iraqi Kurdistan will go after the Kurdish parts of Iran and Turkey and you know in this region, when people want something, they usually don't ask that "nicely". it won't be like Scotland and Catalonia, at least that's what they are afraid of, but who knows maybe it doesn't change anything. for example an independent Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan didn't cause any serious problem.

This is very interesting that China sent a bunch of new wrestlers to the World Championships but here in Turkmenistan they brought their experienced wrestlers and winning few medals. Did they really saved their best wrestlers for this ?! Uzbekistan also brought all of their stars to this competition, India and Kyrgyzstan also somehow took the wrestling competition seriously, stlil no Korea and we can say The Japanese team here isn't that good. despite this, Iran won 8 medals in all freestyle weight classes. but to be honest none of them, even those 3 gold medalists convinced me. we will have the whole Greco competition tomorrow. on paper our Greco team here isn't that great but when I check the draws, the level is a bit lower than freestyle and our Greco team is getting better results recently. so maybe they can get a better result than freestyle here

And Iran. there are 3-4 Kurdish provinces in Iran. even though based on my own experiences the majority of Kurds in Iran consider themselves Iranian in first place. but obviously something like this will cause problems here as well. This referendum is one thing, being a real independent country is something else, specially when all of your neighbors are against you ! still a long way to go to have a Kurdistan country. I wish the best for them, but I'm not sure what's really the "best" for them but I don't think life will get easier for Iraqi Kurdistan people after this. I just hope it doesn't lead to any kind of war in the region.

Our wrestling is in trouble ,they can't dominate even such a not-high-level competition. even though Uzbekistan and few other Central Asia countries brought their A team here but still ... ! today's result was disappointing but expected. I knew only Goleij (97) is a sure gold medal. 74kg final and the way Eliasi lost to Abdurakhmanov was shameful. and happy for the gold medal in team Snooker. Vafaei gave up a good money in his pro Snooker tour to compete here , at least he won't leave the competition empty-handed (and there is still Snooker Singles compettion left) looks like a close battle for the 2nd place in medal table and a gold medal for Fiji !

Winning a medal in equestrian was a bit surprising today but the biggest surprise came from Women's Alysh wrestling, the same girl who got robbed of a gold few days ago finally managed to win a gold in another event ( so many similar events !) Happy to see her smile finally The highlight of the day was in weightlifting when our Olympic Champion broke the world record in total with 413kg. he could break the snatch record too, 185kg was too easy for him but apparently today his goal was only the total record.most of our top weightlifters are training for the World Champs in USA but Moradi wanted to test himself in an official competition after the Olympics. we will have freestyle wrestling starting from tomorrow. our A team sucked big time in Paris and this is our B/C team. but still I expect them few gold medals here. based on the draw, 97kg gold looks safe but can't say the same for other 3 wrestlers. I also hope they win the snooker gold medal tomorrow, that would be fun since I became interested in snooker recently

Despite losing few gold medal chances in Kurash, Taekwondo and Snooker today, MuayThai surprised me with 3 gold medals ! two of them beat Thailand on their way to the gold. which is a very rare thing in this sport. even Turkmenistan beat Thailand today they were nobodies in this sport, how come they improved like this in less than a year to beat Thailand ?! we will have 3 wrestlers in Pahlavani finals, there is no "belt" here (they have trouser instead lol) but they listed this under Belt wrestling, that's a traditional Iranian wrestling, so no surprise if Iranians win matches QUITE easily. they most probably will win all 3 gold medals tonight.

LOL they awarded official medal for "Akhal Teke Cup" !! means another gold for Turkmenistan. that was an special competition for Turkmeni horses ! that wasn't in original handbook, I'm sure about that.

now let's talk about the 3rd day results. Iran is 2nd in medal table and I think they will keep that place till the end. even though Taekwondo competition is about to finish but there are still Kurash, wrestling, Pahlavani etc to give Iran more gold medals. we have live coverage for this competition in Iran but so far ONLY for Taekwondo competitions ! not a bad choice since Iran won 6 gold medals so far, 5 out 6 men's gold medals. we picked up our first defeat here in one of the finals to Korea. this is a great result because of the level the competition is quite good in this sport and this is not even our first team, mostly 2nd or 3rd tier athletes. today we had a surprise gold medal in women's taekwondo ! which was also first gold medal for Iranian girls here. Parisa Javadi won few close matches to win the gold, which is rare for Iranian girls, they are good but always choke in crucial matches mostly because of lack of confidence. (the only exception is Kimia Alizadeh) Ghanbarzadeh broke the indoor national record in high jump, still lost the gold medal to Ghazal of Syria (World Champs bronze medalist) just because Ghazal jumped 2.26 on his first jump. but the most surprising result of the day belonged to our basketball team ! this is the 1st ever competition for Iranian girls after the 1979 revolution ! because FIBA only recently agreed to allow head scarf. Iran women team beat Chinese Taipei today ! I know this is not probably a top team from TPE but they are miles ahead of Iran in women's basketball, that's still quite an achievement. 3x3 basketball will be on the 2018 Asian Games program as well as the Olympics, time to take it more serious.

yeah so true. and we already can see a bit of improvement. I think this time in Jakarta 2018 they will win few medals, if I have to name two countries in Asia improving faster than the rest, I would name Vietnam and then Turkmenistan. even as neighbors, we almost never hear about Turkmenistan here, (except when they stop gas exports to Iran and make trouble for northern provinces ) but from my own experiences they are good people in general , maybe better than other -istan countries. and yes I hope they don't change their policy of not buying other athletes. I remember UAE also tried to not do that for a while but they finally surrender to that and started buying athletes and judokas. I think it's probably just a matter of time for Turkmenistan too if they don't get the quick results they wanted. of course I hope I'm wrong

That's a shame actually. they already cheated by adding toooooo many similar sports to the program. I have to admit the organization is great, some of Iranian officials in the competition claim that's even better than the Olympics in Rio ! even though most of the top organizers are foreigners and not from Turkmenistan. but the problem is Turkmenistan (which is usually a poor country in everything including sports) wants to use this for propaganda as you said, I watch the competition for most of the day and if you watch their TV channels, they show a counter for their medal count which changes minutes by minute and they sound very proud of their "dominance" ! if you watched the competition, Turkmen Goresh (Traditional wrestling), Belt wrestling and Alysh are exactly the same ! the only difference is in scoring system. Another problem is they have two competitions in almost all events. I know it's not cheating, they had that in their handbooks long time ago but almost no other country used that opportunity to send two athletes in each event. mostly in martial arts it's NOT common to see two athletes from the same country in the same weight. and one thing about that girl and belt wrestling, as everybody know the "real" wrestling is not active in Iran for women and wrestling is somehow the national sport. there are so many girls here love to wrestle and this belt wrestling thing is probably the best and only chance for Iranian girls who love wrestling to try something at least a bit similar. I don't really care about belt wrestling medals (they are only good for the medal count) but I know that gold medal would mean everything for that Iranian girl. that's why she was crying on the podium. and btw I just found out that she is a cousin of our Olympic Champion Hassan Yazdani !

3 gold medals and a bunch of silver and bronze happy for the last gold, Taftian broke the national record to win the 60m. the other two golds were from Taekwondo, so far our men's team is undefeated, 4 golds out of 4 athletes. and Iran got robbed a gold medal in belt wrestling against Turkmenistan, I'm glad they didn't disqualify the poor Iranian girl, she was protesting too much .

Despite winning the gold, I'm a bit surprised with the poor performance of Iran team sprint , without China, Korea, Japan and even Malaysia, they should dominate the competition , still they beat Kazakhstan narrowly. poor day in athletics, our Asian Champion in shot put finished 9th with more than 2.5 metres below his own record of few weeks ago ! two more golds in Taekwondo, no surprise, we always can count on this sport except when it counts, the Olympics

They have their own horses here . not just because TKM is a neighbor, mostly because they don't have strict quarantine rules. they traveled to Ashgabat few weeks ago. I'm no expert in this but apparently there is a conflict between International quarantine rules and rules about that in Iran, that's why Iranians could not bring their own horses to the competition, in past only Iranians living outside of Iran could participate as Iranian representatives

That's one of the events I'm looking forward to, curious about the level of the Iranians , because of the quarantine issues they almost never participate with their own horses, I have no clue about their level In Iranian delegation they were the only sport didn't get support from the NOC and paid the trip themselves

This is a shame they let Turkmenistan add whatever it wants to the competition ! there are so manyyyyy wrestling competition here, the real wrestling, Belt-wrestling (two different kind and both of them Freestyle and classical) , Turkmen Goresh (listed as Traditional wrestling), Kazakh Kureshi, Pahlawani wrestling (Iranian traditional wrestling), beside that we have Ju-jitsu, Sambo and Kurash which are a bit similar Iran sent a big delegation, we have some of our top athletes here, including our A futsal team (World Cup bronze medalist) , our pro snooker players, top athletes in Cycling and Chess and also one of our Olympic champions in weightlifting. even though is some of our top sports (Wrestling, Weightlifting, Taekwondo) this is not an A team in general. PS: As someone who follows wrestling A LOT ! I don't know that's the difference between belt-wrestling and Alysh !! they are exactly the same.

I want to say something about the Qualifiers in Asia and why "we" believe everything are always in favor of the Saudis . of course they had a good team this time with Van Marwijk and did great in a tough group with Japan and Australia.but still ! and I'm not even talking about the questionable penalties they received in their early matches. Australians have only themselves to blame for not scoring enough goals against Thailand but don't you guys think those two matches should be held at the same time ? they will answer that was impossible because of the time difference but history tells us that nothing is impossible in AFC ! 2010 Qualifiers we had two important matches in the last day vs and vs if Iran had beat Korea, a tie between PRK and KSA would send Iran directly to the World Cup but in case of a draw . Iran would need a winner in KSA/PRK match to go to the playoffs and in that specific year . playoff against New Zealand was supposed to be not that hard. Iran was leading most of the match but Park Ji-sung scored the equalizer at 82nd minute and later the night, KSA and PRK played when they knew a tie would keep both teams alive. the match wasn't fixed at all but Saudi didn't take huge risk to score, and finally a 0-0 draw sent PRK to the WC and KSA to the playoffs. if those matches were at the same time, and they knew Iran is leading the final score would be different. 2018 Qualifiers the same story. they held AUS vs THA match few hours before Saudi / Japan match . Saudis knew what they want exactly without anymore stress thinking about the other match. of course Australia made it easy for them by barely even beating Thailand. 2014 Qualifiers But you are wrong if you think time difference is important for AFC/FIFA when they really want to have matches at the same time, 1st round in Asia. last match day. vs and vs , they forced Oman to play Thailand at 13:30 in that hot weather because the Saudis didn't want to play "before" them. of course Australia beat the hell of them and Oman beating Thailand eliminated them ,but still those organizers did their best to support the Saudis.

we have Cadet worlds in Greece this week. the most interesting thing about this event is that UWW is trying the new competition format here. we still have the draw a day before the competition but unlike the current format, each day we have the weigh-in at the morning one hour before the competition and not at the same time with the draw ! each day we have the qualification rounds till the quarterfinal in morning session, semifinals wll be held on evening session (actually that's a good thing to give importance to the semifinals) in the next day we have the repechage round in the morning (alongside qualification rounds of the next events) and the finals in the evening (alongside the semis of the next evens) there are some positive things here but I can't understand why they are not changing the format ?! with two-day competition we don't have to go a direct elimination format. or at least they can extend the repechage (not only for those who lost to the finalists) still the biggest problem is having weight-in in the morning and the next day morning, this will be unhealthy if someone cuts a lot of weight. the main reason for this change is to prevent wrestlers from cutting a lot of weight.

just checking the social media and so many people believe we conceded the last goal on purpose to "help" Syria ! knowing Queiroz , he doesn't show mercy to his own brother ! and I believe that was just lack of focus. Iran missed a golden opportunity just two minutes before the Syrian goal. but indeed we helped Syria but not intentionally by having a very poor GK ! in other 9 matches, The opponents didn't have even one single dangerous shot on our goal. today Syria had two semi decent chances and they scored both of them. we need to try someone else. not sure if we have someone better ! after all that was reality check for Iran. we have a good team this time (comparing to 2014) but not as good as some people think.

Syrian players are celebrating/crying like they are qualified for the World Cup. , I highly doubt they can win the playoffs but that's still a huge success for them. Syria used to even barely qualify for the Asian Cup ! let alone thinking about going to the World Cup during the war. A Syria-USA would be interesting in the playoffs and Syria should win 3-0 since Trump travel ban won't let Syrian players entering the US !