MHSN

There are always scandals when there are competition. and our taekwondo is pretty big, getting the NT spot is usually a tough thing to do. yeah and that was one of those guys who didn't make the Iran NT in his first year when he lost narrowly to Khodabakhshi (when Khodabakhshi was dominating the world) Azeris offered him he didn't want to wait another year, and now he is an Olympic medalist and probably will be a world champion this Friday . even though I wish I'm wrong and someone beats him. that would be fantastic if Azerbaijan and their stupid arrogant coach leave the competition without a medal. that would be a bit of consolation for me

I was extremely surprised to see Iran in the list ! but then I remembered we are neighbor to 3 war-torn countries. so that makes sense. even though most of them are probably Afghans. we sometimes forget to remember they are migrants !

is this serious ? Philippines are in both category 1 and 3 !!!

Well that's a long story, they both were in the national team wide roster, actually after the Rio disaster our men's team went through turmoil, they finally picked a coach couple months ago and apparently both of these guys have problems with him. Greek Open was the trial for the Iran NT, they sent top 2-3 in each weight. Asbaghi moving up to 74kg lost in Greek Open, our other competitiors in this weight didn't win any medal but Hajji-Zavvareh withdrew by a fake injury (according to Asbaghi) coaches picked him. Khodabakhshi also moving up to 87kg lost in Greek Open to Larin of Russia, our other candidate Rajabi in this weight also lost to the same guy (actually this Russian guy eliminated Rajabi today as well !) coach ordered an extra trial between Khodabakhshi and Rajabi but Khodabakhshi withdrew called it "unfair" because of double standards, Hajji 74 and Ashourzadeh 58 both were picked without winning the Greek Open. actually they picked Ashourzadeh (who had to withdraw because of Israel draw) over the Greek Cup gold medalist. ------------- btw Asbaghi is now in Azerbaijan training with their national team. in Iran when you lose your position in the NT, you most probably will never get it back. and Azerbaijan with its Iranian coach always welcome them !

now it's obvious that the "Olympic disaster" wasn't just an accident. there is something wrong with our Taekwondo ! they have great players, good coaches, good preparation. I just can't understand what's wrong ?! today they even lost badly, not even close ! Mardani had hard time against Kazakhstan before losing to Mahama Cho ! and only 40-50 days ago our 4th tier athlete beat this Kazakh guy quite easily. we have depth in this sport probably more than any other country but for whatever reason our top athletes can't deliver results ! no chance for Erfanian, which means Hosseini tomorrow is our last chance to do something here. we have kimia in the last day but she was injured the whole year and didn't participate in a single match after Rio, I don't consider her a medal favorite this time.

well countries have different culture I guess but in Iran we never ever had an athlete training individually in sports like this, they do that before the national trials but whoever wins the trials and gets invited to the national camp have to go to the camp, otherwise he is out. I can't remember any other example. Coach says what if next time Moradi or Salimi and the rest also want to train on their own ? no national team will remain ! beside that Weightlifting is a unique sport, when they are in the camp, officials control everything they eat and drink. we had a bad reputation for doping. they don't want another problem with IWF. even though Rostami signed something to takes responsibility for that and will be under doping tests several times. and Rostami is a jerk, right couple minutes after his Rio gold medal he talked to the media (I guess that was even published in English) the first thing he said that "I trained alone, without a coach, blah blah" most people who don't follow sports took it as someone kicked him out of the NT and he had no support, I read so many comments like this "poor guy they didn't support him"

So in first 3 days of the competition, whoever beat the Iranians wins the gold eventually ! lol from Stankovic to Kim Dae-hun, Lee Dae-hoon, Nur Tatar or even Khramtcov they all beat our athletes on their way. (even though Khramtcov didn't beat Hajji , that was walkover) this is not going to happen tomorrow, Acosta who beat our girl just lost in QF and the Russian guy Artamonov is not a favorite for the gold tomorrow. btw bad luck for my favorite Yaghoubi, he was the only one actually had a close match with Lee Dae-hoon who dominated every matches. only if he wasn't deadly tired he could have been the gold medalist today

Actually they took the decision few months ago even before the start of 2017 World League. I think most (if not all) national federations were also aware of that. they don't make it public to keep level 2 and 3 competition interesting for this year. btw I agree this is not fair for Slovenia (and Belgium)

Another no-medal day for Iran and again losing in quarterfinal, it looks like Farzan didn't learn his lesson from Rio. he stil wanted to win the match with a narrow margin and when you gave up points this late there is no way to come back. no we can blame the coach, we had another guy in this weight who won the Greek open (which was the Iranian trials) beating this Russian guy. still they picked Farzan because of his name. I think he is done, time to use someone else in this weight. well I don't think we can win a gold medal here, none of our remaining athletes are favorite for the gold (I know TKD is not predictable) bad days for Iranian Taekwondo.

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