MHSN

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,

yes that's fair and at the same time they are awarding athletics and cycling.

Sure , I'm against any kind of mixed events, those athletes can win medal in individual events if they are good enough. and the team competition in Taekwondo is very weird, anybody fights against anybody. they couldn't separate men from women in this format. ! imagine a +80kg guy fighting against a 50kg girl !

They have only 3 solutions, cutting the lightest weight , cutting the 105kg or changing the whole program. in this case they have to erase all world records etc. I don't know what should I do if that was my decision.

Very disappointing, I don't like almost any of these changes. (maybe except one or two) poor IWF, they wanted to add one more women's weight, now they even lost a men's weight ! I wonder if they change the whole weights once again or just pick the lightest weight to cut we have a canoeist, who had a 4 years plan to win a medal in Tokyo, someone has to tell him that his C1 200m event is gone now !

well the Government (by Government I mean Rouhani, Zarif etc) is smart enough to make any threat right now , even the intelligence minister denied Saudi's involvement in this, at least for now since they have no proof yet. but IRGC published an statement claiming they will take "revenge" ! they didn't mention Saudi's name though but we know they are talking about them. probably just an empty threat but you never know.

well things are apparently getting better with Hamas new leader Ismail Haniya. which is not a good new for the Iranian people in general, meaning they will spend/waste more money to Hamas. I wouldn't say that if that money couple help the Palestinian people and their lives but we know it doesn't hlep much. mostly create more problems for them

This is a good summary but things are not black and white like this. for example Hamas is a Sunni group. and some Sunni countries like Oman and Kuwait always had good relationships with Iran. and I also don't believe all those new about Iran's influence in Yemen and Houthis, Iran is not that interested in Yemen. and about today here people remember this comment from the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman only a month ago. " We will not wait until the fight is inside Saudi Arabia and we will work so that the battle is on their side, inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia "

This is a good summary but things are not black and white like this. for example Hamas is a Sunni group. and some Sunni countries like Oman and Kuwait always had good relationships with Iran. and I also don't believe all those new about Iran's influence in Yemen and Houthis, Iran is not that interested in Yemen. and about today here people remember this comment from the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman only a month ago. " We will not wait until the fight is inside Saudi Arabia and we will work so that the battle is on their side, inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia "

well Iran is not an Arab country and this is the first time such things happen in middle of Iran in 20-30 years. Iran is/was probably the safest country in the middle east. Today was a very sad day. I never saw such thing in Tehran in my lifetime (yeah we had MEK terrorist attacks but that was long time ago) I prefer to not judge until we know the nationality of the terrorists. that's very important. but that was about time until ISIS found a way inside Iran. so far 12 deaths, mostly innocent civilians RIP and I hope such things never happen again, anywhere specially in my hometown.

mostly because the traditional powerhouses didn't take it serious YET, things will change if it makes it to the Olympics.

in Iran almost nobody wear shoes inside the house, never, that's a big no no. Eastern culture I believe, beside that people care a lot about their carpets here in Iran.

so Saudi and UAE football federation already asked AFC to not play in Qatar ! lol he corrupt AFC already let the Saudi teams do that with the Iranian clubs/NTs but this time it's about Qatar. and in west asia almost half teams are from Qatar and Iran !! since they have money they believe they own the world. we don't play this, we don't play that ! cutting all diplomatic relationships because of small reasons is really stupid, Saudis and that guy Jubeir is playing with fire. and this is a shame that countries like UAE and Egypt have no opinion for themselves and only follow the Saudis like puppets. btw folks in Iranian government is not sad about this at all, now with this Qatar has to count on Iran as the only "neighbor" with at least diplomatic relationship.

Actually the reserve team of Iran in normal situation only one of those players (Ebadipour) could be a starter ! I don't think that was Kolakovic's plan to win the match with reserve players. he probably gave up trying and decided to rest his main team for the next weekend in Tehran. but yeah life is unpredictable sometimes.

Looks like FIFA is testing a new rules for the penalties. I was watching Portugal-Uruguay at the U20 World Cup. when it went to the penalties the order of that was something like tie-break in Tennis, Portugal took the 1st penalty but then Uruguay had 2 penalties instead of normal 1 and they continued like that. I don't know if I like this "change" looks a bit unbalanced but I guess that's more fair than the current format when one team always takes the first penalty

Very disappointing to lose like this, missing spikes in crucial moments of 2nd and 3rd sets. Italy is a great team but they were quite beatable tonight but Iran didn't take its chances. that was the first serious match for Kolakovic, I hope he starts to bring new players to the team but not someone terrible like Masoud Gholami ! we played with Mousavi and Adel Gholami as middle blockers for a decade ! now Mousavi is injured and the new MB was TERRIBLE.

Finally after almost a year, IWF started to close the cases and ban weightlifters from the re-analyses. http://www.iwf.net/anti-doping/sanctions/ there are 3 Kazaskh weightlifters here, all Olympic champions. Maneza, Podobedova and Chinshanlo. they didn't update this page yet, they are still in "closed IOC – ongoing IWF" state http://www.iwf.net/anti-doping/reanalysis/ btw based on IWF previous rules, now they are supposed to ban Kazakhstan Weightlifting Federation for a year ! they made that rule before the Rio to ban countries with more than 3 positive cases . when journalists asked them when that ban starts they said after finishing the cases for each country !