MHSN

We talked about the circus in our weightlifting before and another chapter of that just started ! I think people read about the story after the 2002 Olympics, when 5 Olympic medalists tried to change the coach and they finally managed to do that ! after testing few coaches , finally Sajjad Anourshiravani (one of those 5 weightlifters, now retired) became the coach and led the team into the Rio Olympics, on paper his result was good by winning two gold medals but we know he had nothing really to do with those gold medals. Moradi had no competition and he could win the gold with any other coach and Rostami, he trained by himself ! few months before the Rio (when Iran NT had no coach) Rostami claimed he wants to train by himself , on his own methods and separately from the rest of the team. things like that are quite unusual in Iran, our federation eventually let him do that mostly because they couldn't risk losing a possible gold medal, but they were saying they will fix that after the Olympics. he went to Rio and won the gold and broke the world record. After Rio they said that's enough and now he has to join the NT, but he said no, he didn't show up in the NT camp, even somehow indirectly threatening to leave Iran and compete for another country ! (which is not really possible) hey wasted few months to finally announce that they will let him train individually ! now this made the coach angry and Anoushiravani and his assistant Nasirshalal (another member of that 5-masketeer team) both resigned cuz they found it "disrespectful " !!! this is really funny because these two guys were fully supporting Rostami and Salimi when they were trying to change the previous coach. both of them didn't continue their career, still they didn't say that and came to defend their "teammates" to get rid of the coach who gave them everything ! now they are the coaches and the same guy got them being kicked out ! What goes around comes around now few months before the WCh, the whole team is in disastrous situation, we could have our best ever team this year with 4 former Olympic champions plus couple more world class weightlifters but Mr Rostami ruined everything as he usually does ! He is a great weightlifter, (winning the 2016 IWF weightlifter of the year award) but a terrible person --------------------------------------------------------------------------- on another news, Iran officially started the women's weightlifting, the Iranian WL federaton already told to their committees around Iran to start women's weightlifting, even though for now they are more focused on education and training the coaches, but probably in few years when they reach the certain level we will see Iranian women in international competitions. at least that's what I hope for.

Today was a sad day for Iran, our most entertaining athlete just ran out of gas and lost to Lee Dae-hoon in quarterfinal where he barely could stand on his feet ! Lee in the final probably against the Jordanian guy will be very interesting. we have another athlete in semifinal today 74kg but as I said before he is not going to show up and defend his world title. thanks to the Egyptian Eissa for punching into his face and sending him to the hospital. and Dalakliev secured Bulgaria's first ever world medal in this sport ! congrats to him and Bulgaria

That was probably just a mistake but if you want something funny, you have to check women's 73kg draw, they changed it totally ! apparently they were wrong about someone's ranking ! here is the original draw http://www.worldtaekwondo.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Draw-Sheet_Women-73kg_C75_1.01.pdf and the modified one http://www.worldtaekwondo.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Draw-Sheet_Women-73kg_C75_2.0.pdf SORN Seavmey of Cambodia was seeded #20 but she is unseeded in the new draw, probably they got her wrong with her sister lol

the Vietnamese guy actually got injured during the match and withdrew.

I was very wrong here, Nikpai actually showed up and manhandled the Israeli guy ! good for him

not really, they prefer not face Israelis at all. what kind of statement it is when you cowardly making excuses like injuries etc the problem is one person said something 38 years ago and nobody can change that.

lol but I do, actually the first thing I check after receiving a draw is to find the Israeli athletes to see if they are close to ours or not. that's sad I know. but there is a difference when Iranian doens't show up against ISR and when other countries do that, they do that to make statement, you see this Syrian guy participated in weight-in then withdrew, he could easily not show up and get away with that but now he may face suspension because of that but he probably doesn't care. but for Iran, this is not the case, they always make excuses for that, for example in Rio (and also in London ) we didn't send one of our qualified Judokas only because there was an Israeli in his weight ! and there was something less than 10% chance of facing him !

Did you really expect the Syrian athlete to compete ? but this is funny he participated in weight-in and was in the competition weight and didn't get DQ, then withdrew ! Certain countries will never compete with the Israelis, at least for now, Syria is one of them, Afghanistan two time Olympic medalist Nikpai wll have to fight an Israeli in 2nd round, I highly doubt he shows up on the mat as well.

Our federation just confirmed that Hajj-Z. can't compete tomorrow and will settle for bronze, at least the good news is he is fine, no health issue. but that's a shame he can't defend his title. with this I doubt we can match 3 gold medals of 2015 Worlds, both Hadipour and Hajji-Zavareh were our gold medal chances. we never had won the gold medal in 54kg (the lowest weight) Hadipour had his chance today even though Kim TH was simply better but I believe Hadipour was also tired after that hard semifinal against Thailand. while Kim had it very easy against the Italian kid. we will have 68kg tomorrow which is probably the most interesting weight in this sport. I consider Yaghoubi as our most entertaining fighter, but he has to face the face of Korean Taekwondo Lee Dae-Hoon in quarterfinal. and we have that Jordanian Olympic gold medalist in other side of the draw, he came from nowhere to win the gold in Rio in a brilliant way, now he is not new anymore and his opponents are more prepared, this is interesting to see what he wll do here.

man that looked dangerous for Hajji the whole idea of allowing punches in TKD was stupid from the start and this is the result , he was defenseless when the Egyptian guy surprisingly punched to his face. he secured the bronze after the disqualified the guy but I hope he is fine in first place, he wasn't moving at all when they carrying out of the stadium I'm also sad for Kiani, she had a great run beating Aziez and going to the quarterfinal. that was the most important match of her career and she completely messed up. she could become the second Iranian girl winning world medal in TKD. better luck next time.

As far as I know in all age group tournaments in any other sport, when call it Under XX, players are under that age for the final tournament. not the qualifiers. the easiest solution is to simply calling the tournament U23 which makes more sense but I know UEFA enjoys to be "unique" and takes weird decisions.

I feel sorry for Slovakia, Happy for Italy but I also can't blame Germany and Italy, one more goal could eliminate any of them, the last 10-15 minutes was shameful though. even though Italy had some serious chances around minute 70th. btw why this is Euro U21 ! when players are actually Under 23 !!

Tomorrow 9 am Korea time we will have Round of 128 and Round of 64 for both M74 and W49 in the 1st session session 2 starts 14pm with Round of 32, Round of 16 and Quarterfinal for both M74 and W49 and then we will have the finals from today weights M54 and W46, starting from 19pm

well when they publish the reports after the competition, they will keep those athletes and those countries in the participating athletes/countries list, They want a big big number. we have this situation mostly only at the World Championship and with African countries.

We are having new rules in Taekwondo, giving more points to body kicks and direct one point for the cautions, we have more high scoring matches as result

We had the draw two days before the competition, most of these guys from poor countries didn't even make it to South Korea, and probably few of them didn't make weight in time. WTF once changed the rules to have the draw at the same time with weight-in (same as wrestling) to avoid situations like this but apparently that change didn't last long

WTF just changed its name and logo. they are "World Taekwondo" from now on. they finally found out their name WTF was just funny meanwhile Korea and Thailand both qualified two athletes for the SF in the 1st day. no surprise as Thailand is always very good in lower weights. the biggest surprise was the Italian guy , never heard his name before. our lone representative today Armin Hadipour also made it to the semis, I predict silver medal for him, the Korea Kim TH looks very good and will have extra help at home. like previous editions we will have the finals in the next day.

http://www.worldtaekwondo.org/competition/world-taekwondo-championships/championships-2017/information/ Draw

Actually those bigger teams are happy with these changes because FIVB promised them more money with the new format. like it or not Volleyball is alive mostly with east Asian money beside that when you look at the WL ranking, I think only 2 or 3 teams deserve more here. Belgium, Slovenia and maybe the Netherlands. AUS, Japan, China and Korea were ranked 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th. so putting them in a 16-team tournament doesn't seem very wrong.

Well the Iranian Volleyball Federation published the new format teams two months ago ! 12 teams guaranteed for seven years BRA-ITA-USA-RUS-POL-ARG-SRB-FRA-CHN-JPN-GER-IRN 4 teams only for 2018 BUL-AUS-KOR-CAN

Today we had a good chance for our first ever gold medal at the Asian Championships, OK maybe not the first , I don't have old results but at least the first gold medal after a long long time but we finished with a silver and a bronze. we have a good Sabre team now but Korea is just better and they have the individual and team title in Asia in this event for a long time. today Rahbari beat two Koreans before losing to Gu Bongil in the final. out of our 4 Sabrists, they only lost to each other or the Koreans !

I wonder how they want to determine the best team of Asia as an example. imagine all Asian teams got eliminated in 1st round. if they go with points ratio that would be quite unfair. because they won't face the same level of opponents ! China as host will be seeded and will get easier opponents. Another option is having a mini tournament for the eliminated teams but that most probably won't happen.

Korea lost to Qatar ! this secured the 1st place in Group A for Iran Korea is in real danger to fail to qualfy after a long time, now even China and Qatar are still alive for a playoff place. it will be fun to make things worse for Korea by beating them next match we still remember WCQ 2010 when they came to the last match by one aim to eliminate Iran in other Group. UAE is 99% out which is not a good news for fair play ! I hope they play fair with their Saudi "brothers" Saudi needs GD and they can score a lot against UAE. Japan made the life harder by not beating Iraq in Tehran. they are still in top but their next two matches will be against Australia and Saudi Arabia !

World Cup here we come Iran qualified to the World Cup for the second time in a row, which is a first for Iran. And it has yet to concede single goal after 8 matches. I also hope we can help Uzbekistan by beating Korea in next match, even though that won't be easy , they are seeking revenge

IRN-UZB 1-0 at half time, now they only have to do their usual Job (another clean sheet ) and we will be qualified,