MHSN

and apparently even Ukraine will take back the quota at 65kg and probably other disqualified wrestlers will get it back as well, terrible terrible decision by UWW , they could wait a bit before taking a decison

according to some Russian websites, Magomedmurad Gadzhiev (Poland) is cleared to wrestle in Rio ! we have to wait for the official announcement but as far as I know consider it a done thing. just for info, Gadzhiev won his quota in European qualifier but got disqualified for meldonium. now the question is, he will go to Rio in place of who ? Savid Safaryan (who got his spot after the ban) ? or he will take one of those re-allocation quotas won be the host Brazil.

Not sure if this is already posted http://en.mastkd.com/2016/06/maroccan-taekwondo-qualified-athlete-banned-olympics-rio2016-doping/ with this her quota most probably goes to Chinazum Nwosu (NGR)

now it makes sense, Ajan said 10 positive tests from Beijing and now we have all 10 names

Gold in weightlifting ?? I don't think so with all those Chinese weightlifters around, medal yes but gold no even though I would be happy if somebody (beside North Korea) breaks Chinese monopoly in lighter weights here.

This is interesting that countries announce official target for the Olympics, they never do such things in Iran, predication maybe but promised goals no. this time they are talking about winning 4-6 medals !!! back in London they were talking about the same number of medals but we ended up winning 12 they always just want to lower the expectations.

of course I know him very well, he used to wrestle in Iranian league as well. I would rank him 7 or 8 behind those top 4, Ketoev (ARM), Odikadze (GEO) and whoever Ukraine sends. this is a tough weight with so many Russian wrestlers wrestling for other countries , beside Saritov, we have Gazyumov (AZE), Musaev (KGZ), Ibragimov (UZB), another bragimov (KAZ) and Ketoev (ARM), they are all from Russia !!!! with these 6 and Boltukaev we will have 7 Russian wrestlers in the competition ! if you ask me he has a chance for medal, specially with this random draw but he is small for this weight, I don't give him chance for the gold but a medal is possible for him with a good draw.

Very good, he just ate Gatsalov (multiple times world champion) alive in Russian nationals, he beat the current world champion Kyle Snyder and the current Olympic champion Jake Varner in Yarygin tourney this year. even though there are 4 big names fighting for medals in this weight, Boltukaev, Gazyumov, Snyder and our Yazdani. of course there are 4-5 more other good wrestlers but these 4 are the favorites.

I never bought it, most probably just a poor translation. cheating is a part of their culture, they will never be sorry of that. Ramonov is one of the favorites at 65kg, but this is probably the most unpredictable weights in freestyle with so many favorites. if I had to pick someone it would be between Ramonov and Chamizo but both of them can be beaten by other wrestlers. also we have to wait to see if UWW allows Gadzhiev (POL) to compete or not, they took his quota because of using meldonium but didn't ban him !!!! his case is active in CAS now. he will be as good as Ramonov as Chamizo. That will be a huge huge surprise if Sadulaev doesn't win the gold, he is just too good ! after him I give more chances to Boltukaev for the gold, he is a monster. Ramonov is probably their 3rd chance, I also give good chance to Gedeuv, he is damn good but the problem is he has to beat Burroughs , the second best freestyle wrestler in the world right now. they had a close match in Las Vegas but I expect Burroughs to be more prepared this time.

Russia freestyle team for Rio 57 Viktor Lebedev 65 Soslan Ramonov 74 Ainuar Geduev 86 Abdulrashid Sadulaev 97 Anzor Boltukaev 125 Bilyal Makhov

well this is not surprising for me ! actually I'm a bit surprised by his poor snatch, even though snatch is always tricky, sometimes you miss a weight you usually can lift easily. I think I said before that he will be the clear favorite for the gold in Rio. probably Iran's best chance in all sports. IWF already banned most of his serious opponents. as far as I know our new coach prefers to keep them near the actual body weight, he did participate in Fajr Cup and Pan American Champs few weeks ago , so I guess he is somewhere near the competition weight.

today we had a competition between weightlifters to determine the national team for the Olympics, coach will announce the team soon but here is the result , not impressing at all. Ayoub Mousavi (85) 165+200=365 (162X 162X 165 / 200 210X 211X) Ali Hashemi (94) 175+no mark ! (172X 175 180X / 212X 212X 215X) Sohrab Moradi (94) 180+234=414 (180 185X 188X / 220 234 -) Mohammad Reza Barari (105) 180+220=400 (180 185X 185X / 220 225X 225X ) Bahador Molaei (+105) 190+240=430 (190 195X 195X / 240 252X -) Kianoush Rostami (85) is training separately in another city (in Tehran) and wasn't even there to compete and Behdad Salimi decided to not. Moradi's 234kg rcord is 1kg higher than Ilya Ilyin current world record. still his snatch wasn't impressing by his standards, still he will be clear favorite for gold in Rio. others didn't impress at all. specially Barari and Hashemi they lifted even less than their Fajr Cup results ! Bahador has improved by 20kg which is a good sign, still he needs 10 more kilos to compete for a medal in Rio. I think they will drop Mousavi for sure, Rostami, Moradi and Salimi are already selected. the last 2 spots are between Hashemi, Barari and Molaei

Chinese team according to some rumors, not official 56 Long Qingquan 62 Chen Lijun 69 Shi Zhiyong 77 Lu Xiaojun 85 Tian Tao 105 Yang Zhe 48 Zou Zhihui 53 Li Yajun 63 Deng Wei 69 Xiang Yangmei interesting if they send someone at 105 ! it seems they also want to benefit from possible ban on RUS/KAZ/BLR athletes.

Yes of course. in wrestling and taekwondo anybody from Iran is a medal treat. History tells us to count on everybody in wrestling, sometimes when our bigger names fail, the others come and win medals, back in London , Komeil Ghasemi was a nobody who barely made the team in last days but he won bronze after losing to the gold medalist narrowly (by ball draw) but realistically our chance is very slim to win medal in some weights , 130kg Greco, 65kg freestyle. in general we will have a better team in Greco-Roman, they are all experienced, all of them have won world/olympic medals before, 4 of them World/Olympic Champion but the thing is Greco-Roman is much more unpredictable, while in freestyle we know there are only 4-5 wrestlers to worry about in each weight. in Greco everybody can be dangerous. even though we still have to wait for the coach to announce the team , but this is most probably our Greco team, this is interesting we exactly send the same 6 guys to London and they won 3 gold medals for us ! 59: Hamid Sourian 66: Omid Norouzi 75: Saeid Abdevali 85: Habibollah Akhlaghi 98: Ghasem Rezaei 130: Bashir Babajanzadeh only Sourian and Abdevali are officially selected. and I can say Akhlaghi as well, because his rival Nouri was TERRIBLE in international competitions. he beat Akhlaghi 3 times this year but he is only good against Akhlaghi apparently !! Norouzi has a rival in Zeidvand, who won Polish tourney recently beating the World Champion from South Korea. still I think coach Bana will pick Norouzi 90%. the same goes to Rezaei at 98, Mehdi Aliyari won the Polish tourney (even though nto in a convincing way), the only serious question is in 130kg, Ghasemi-Monjazi won the quota but he lost to Babajanzadeh in Poland, but narrowly. it's really hard to pick any of them, even though I think this is our weakest weight, I believe Bana will pick BBJZ eventually but Ghasemi-Monjazi would be my pick, at least he can do crazy things sometimes.

now we almost know our squad in freestyle wrestling, yesterday we had trials in the last weight 125kg, which was controversial, 57: Hassan Rahimi 65: Meisam Nassiri 74: Hassan Yazdani 86: Alireza Karimi 97: Reza Yazdani 125: Komeil Ghasemi That was really sad to lose Ahmad Mohammadi at 65, probably our best chance for gold in freestyle wrestling after his injury they forced him to wrestle in trials ,he lost, he was terrible at the World Cup and Armenia tourney was his last chance, again he lost to a random Armenian guy. Nasiri is just average, I highly doubt he can medal in Rio. even though he has his chances, there is no clear favorite in this weight. realistically, Hassan Rahimi is our best chance for gold now but even for him nothing is guaranteed, we know he chokes sometime, I would also consider Reza Yazdani a gold medal favorite but we don't know about his shape after his injury, he didn't wrestle anywhere since then. if he is healthy he indeed has a good chance. we have good chance at 74 and 86 for medal, our wrestlers are good , very good but the thing is there are some legendary wrestlers in those weights, like Burroughs and Sadulaev, almost impossible to beat. I don't know what to expect from Komeil, he is unpredictable, he almost lost the spot to Hadi but they made him wrestle once again , this time Komeil won narrowly. gold medal is almost impossible for him but he can medal at least

A bit early to predict, we still even don't know our squad in important sports. if IOC/IWF bans Russia/Kazakhstan and Belarus this will benefit Iran a lot. but I expect 5-6 in wrestling, 3 in Taekwondo and 3-4 in weightlifting. which means something around 11 plus one more in another sport. (hopefully) so I would say 12. the exact number of 2012. even though I have to admit this is a bit optimistic.

I think UWW still has some problems with wrestlers they disqualified so quick , some of those wrestlers who "qualified" through qualifiers and later got disqualified by UWW are participating in international competition ! which means they are not banned.apparently they had less than enough meldonium to be banned and they turned to CAS to overturn UWW's decision. in this case UWW will probably give them those "wild cards"

IWF disqualified more names from 2015 worlds. out of all positive A samples only one of them (Al-Saleem, KSA) is still undecided. the rest already got disqualified from the results list. In this new list, they disqualified all positives from Kazakhstan, North Korea and Belarus including Kydyrbayev, Uteshov and both Kims from PRK

Quota number 60 for Iran. Mohammad Arzandeh, High Jump once again Kazakhstan track did magic

the number will be less if they disqualify RUS/BLR/KAZ completely even though on other hand I think we will have unused quota for individual ranking qualifiers as well

That's a different story, those countries lost those 1-2 quotas because of their positive samples after "2015 Worlds" which is confirmed now, IWF had to announce it since that case is apparently closed now. but KAZ/BLR/RUS will be banned if they have more than 3 doped weightlifters in 2008/2012 Olympics. this case is still not finalized. by saying that I'm not sure if they will be banned after or before Rio, just saying these are two different stories

Well the main source for that was an Iranian news website which I translated here. they also said there is an Iranian among them which was wrong, so I say let's not fully trust Iranian sites, they suck when they translate something.

IWF added more names to the list of "confirmed" bans from 2015 worlds , they are all from Moldova except Lovchev, who lost his gold medal and his world record LOVCHEV Aleksei BULAT Iurie PIPA Artiom DUDOGLO Ghenadie

And IWF now published the list of 2008 positives. again Ilyin ! KHURSHUDYAN, Hripsime (ARM) – Stanozolol (S1.1 Anabolic agents) DUDOGLO, Alexandru (MDA) – Stanozolol (S1.1 Anabolic agents) EVSTYUKHINA, Nadezda (RUS) – dehydrochlormethyltestosterone metabolites (S1.1 Anabolic agents) TAYLAN, Nurcan (TUR) – Stanozolol (S1.1 Anabolic agents) SHAINOVA, Marina (RUS) – Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone metabolites and stanozolol metabolites (S1.1 Anabolic agents) ZAIROV, Intigam (AZE) – Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (S1.1 Anabolic agents) – Remains suspended due to previous IWF sanction until 21.12.2023 ILYIN, Ilya (KAZ) – Stanozolol (S1.1 Anabolic agents) – Remains provisionally suspended only 3 of them finished on podium, Ilyin, Shainova and Evstyukhina.

And Syrian boxer didn't show up against Israel at 81kg. no surprise.