MHSN

Thanks, that was very interesting, I was thinking about the same thing. this makes more sense to qualify top athletes from ranking before continental tournaments but there is a bit difference here, back in 2012 even the 3rd athlete (for team event) had to qualify as individual (despite not being eligible to participate in singles event), which means top Asian nations still took 1 spot each for their 3rd player in Asian qualification tournament,

Brackets are out for the 1st day of European qualification , 59kg Greco This weight is very important for me because our legendary Sourian yet to qualify, surprisingly Russia entered Sanal Semenov (Mingiyan's brother) which makes me believe all those doping rumors ! if not why they have to send such a new name ?! I doubt he qualifies but who knows ! the top half is much easier, I see Berge (NOR) and Lashkhi (GEO) as favorites but none of them are anything special so I also give a good chance to Fris of Serbia, after all host nation always will have refs help ! (and Lalovic is from Serbia ) in bottom half we have Amoyan, the Russian guy, Kostadinov and that dangerous Moldovan wrestler Islamov, but this is interesting for me, it seems some countries didn't enter their best guy here, and save them for the next weekend in Monglia (bad news for us). Bulgaria apparently saved Angelov (even though Kostadinov is also good), even Croatia didn't send Lizatovic !? 66kg Greco Again a much much easier top half, that happens with this blind draw ! BUL or GEO will win the quota probably, bottom half is a different story, I consider Lorincz as the top favorite but we also have Mammadov (AZE), Vardanyan (UKR) and few more wrestlers from LTU, CRO and TUR. 57kg freestyle The level is much lower in Europe in freestyle, this time in this weight the top half is tougher, Shuptar (UKR) is my favorite Ukraianin wrestler and I consider him the favorite in top half but we also have Lachinov (BLR) and the Azeri guy. Armenia and Moldova are also there. in bottom half Dukov (BUL) is the only notable wrestler but he is not that consistent. Dukov (ROU) also has a good chance there. 65kg freestyle almost a balanced draw here, we have Kaya (TUR), Nurykov (BLR) plus GEO and UKR and even MDA in top half while we have Safaryan, Gadzhiev and Novachkov in bottom half. Bucur of ROU is also good. I think in top half it will be between Nurykov and Kaya , in bottom half Safaryan and Gadzhiev, while Novachkov can beat both of them. he got robbed a quota in World Championship, people still remember his match against Ramonov.

Interesting point, didn't notice that, yes probably. They probably just wanted to have someone in competition for their crowd in last 3 days, otherwise it could be boring for Hong Kong TT fans.

Draw for 2nd stage of Asian qualifiers http://ittf.com/Ol_Qual/2016AS/MenStage2.pdf Bad news for all those non-Asian athletes who were counting on top 22 places in the ranking ! most of Asian top players (from China, Korea, Japan, TPE) withdrew from the competition as they are guaranteed a spot through ranking !! they had to participate here to be eligible for the ranking qualification and they did !! with this we have a very good chance to have a second male player, I hope Noshad makes it too, in this case he won't be mad at his little brother

Nima won 4-2, the younger brother

I say almost no chance. Noshad had beaten top East Asian players before but still very unlikely to beat them again here. he is table tennis icon here but recently his younger brother was in better shape. btw Neda Shahsavari had a miraculous come back to win the middle Asia women's quota for Iran. what a match it was ! she was down 3-1 and 10-6 in 5th game and still managed to win the match 4-3 against the player she never beat before.

so Alamian brothers have to play for the Middle Asia spot ! I wonder which brother I prefer to win. they are almost in the same level.

So we got Korea, Uzbekistan, Qatar, China and Syria . Lol we were in the same group with 3 of them last time ! And AGAIN Korea

Reza Yazdani, one of Iran's gold medal hopes in Rio got injured and will miss the trials ! They postpone the Olympic trials in his weight hoping for him to recover fast. Yazdani missing the Olympics will be a big blow for Iran. beside him, Olympic defending champion Ghasem Rezaei also got injured and since he won't recover in time for Friday trials they postponed the trial in this weight and they will wrestle in another time. Rezaei's injury is not that serious. so we will have trials only in 4 weights !!! 65, 74 and 86 freestyle and 85 Greco ! with the following wrestlers 65: Ahmad Mohammadi vs Meisam Nassiri 74: Hassan Yazdani vs Mostafa Hosseinkhani 86: Alireza Karimi, Ehsan Lashgari, Reza Bayat and Meisam Mostafa-Jokar 85 Greco: Habibollah Akhlaghi, Mojtaba Karimfar, Yousef Ghaderian, Davoud Abedinzadeh, Davoud Akhbari, Hossein Nouri

Weightlifting is a bit different ! We should know which countries are already qualified (through World Championship) to calculate the ranking for the European.

This is interesting/funny. we are having first continental championships while IWF still didn't finalize doping cases for the 2015 worlds.

Is there any livescore (or at least results link) for the Asian Qualifier (and Asian Championships) in Wuxi, China ? I can't find any

lol if Denmark wanted to do Norway a favor, they could lose by 3 goals. which was still enough for them, in that case Croatia needed a 3-goal win to qualify, now they just need a win.

Oops, you are right if Spain beat Sweden by 2 goals, then both teams will have a GD of -1. let's say Spain beat Sweden X to X-2. then: SLO +2 GD SWE -1 GD / Goals 22+X ESP -1 GD / Goals 21+X SWE advances virtue of scoring more goals.

Nope. they will be out if they lose to Spain, even by 1 goal. on other hand Slovenia is 99% qualified,

GD among those teams, then Goals scored among those teams. Overall GD is highly unlikely to be considered for a 3 way tiebreak.

Really impressed by Bahrain, They just show everybody that Asian teams can at least compete (and lost respectfully) with the bests of the world. shame on our handball to send such a weak team, a better Iran (still not complete) beat Bahrain in Doha. but Bahrain looks improved.

Nope, he won the gold at the African Championship in Egypt , while in Olympic qualifier he won silver. btw these guys most probably tested positive for the African Champs, which still disqualifies them for all tournaments after that including the Olympic Qualifier.

Interesting/sad news ! I checked the link and since I know a bit Arabic, this link says two Egyptian wrestlers failed the drug test, the other one "Maghawri" won bronze in 57kg but didn't qualify. per UWW usual rules, if they disqualify Ali Hamdy, his silver medal will go to the bronze medalist from his side, Buassat of GBS ! Lucky him to take the bronze medal match serious, most wrestlers didn't .

Yes indeed, but we always had/have this problem in handball, these group of players boycotted the NT before, Iman Jamali even switched nationality to play for Hungary ! having problem with the coach is just an excuse, they simply don't care about the national team, Handball is the only sport we have such problem, as you said Iranians are patriots. no, Bahrain is good in handball (in Asian level of course) , as far as I know they don't have any foreign players.

lol yeah, I already posted the PDF book about the tie breaking rules earlier in this thread. first they determine the top team (Italy), then, 2nd and 3rd and since we have a tie for 4th place (they tied each other so no head to head match) then their results against the top team (Italy) determine the 4th place,

Just for Info, Germany advanced to the quarterfinal over Kazakhstan, not because of their better GD. just because they lost by 6 goals to Italy and Kazakhstan by 11. just a reminder about weird tie breaking rules in this sport

This is the wide roster, they waited for him until the last day, (actually his name is still in their 16-man list) but he claims he can't make it. Mousavi who plays in Romani (according to the list ) also won't be there. They didn't bother to come and play for their national team. The federation suspended the other Esteki (who plays in France) for the same reason as he didn't come to play in the Asian Championship.

Not the whole A team but all of players who are playing outside of Iran. in fact all important players, and this is not the first time, it happens almost every time ! long story, but this time they don't like the current Croat coach and don't want to play for him, beside that they probably know there is no chance for Iran, they don't bother to play. even though officially our best player (Sajjad Esteki) claims his Qatari club didn't release him which is not true. btw, if it wasn't for World Selection team (aka Qatar) Iran would qualify for the Olympics from Asia.

Iran will be punching bag of Group B. Our complete team could compete at least to get respectful results but now ... this team is as bad as the team they sent to Asian Championship. (probably much weaker without Sajjad Esteki) they will probably lose by more than 20 goals, maybe even more I don't think I ever see peace in our handball community in my lifetime ! only in handball I see our top players refuse to play for the national team.