MHSN

Iran already secured the team title in freestyle for the 6th time in history by 7 medals (1 gold, 1 silver, 3 bronze and 2 more finals tomorrow) other people most probably don't understand but this is the most important thing for our wrestling federation but to me we need at very least 2 gold medals to feel satisfied about the results. Azarpira did great today beating the unbeatable Olympic Champion Tazhudinov. this one wasn't expected 65kg final will be the replay of 2024 Olympic final, hopefully this time with a different winner

FILA tried so many different and stupid rules to avoid a match ending up 0-0. Karelin was just unlucky they tried that one in 2000. if I'm not wrong that was the first time they were trying that chest-to-chest format. I don't think it was in 1999. they made that up right before the Olympics. Karelin still could win the match though. nowadays they made it easy for themselves, giving caution to someone randomly and then it's not 0-0 anymore

on paper Iran have a strong freestyle team this year, loaded with lots of former World/Olympic medalists but we knew most of them are not in a good shape. for example Nokhodi at 79 didn't wrestle a single match since 2024, coming of a knee surgery. Yazdani at 70 was kind of a last minute change. Ghasempour was forced to cut to 86 to help the team. 125kg gold was a sure thing before the Championship but the rest failed to win the gold we grabbed and will grab 4-5 silver and bronze medals and are leading the team race though. we still have two more chances left, hopefully at least one of them makes the final and win the gold. finishing the competition with just 1 gold will be a failure. I was really sure about 92kg gold but Firouzpour just bottled it against the Russian (probably the weakest Russian wrestler here) the team race is between Iran, USA and Japan and will be decided in the last day.

Musukaev was the man of the day so far attacking the Japanese wrestler on the mat (Aoyagi is trying to show the ref that Musukaev had locked his fingers but he did in a weird/funny/stupid way) and later off the mat

yeah OCA technical handbooks are usually super secret. not easy to find online I got some of them through people I know by email, BUT I have good news, you can find all of them now in one place here. special thanks to TPE NOC. the number of teams is obviously mentioned in the handbooks. as for the qualification methods, some of them are in the handbooks, I also found couple more (Water Polo for example) from our national federations news channel.

Mr Ramazanov managed to beat our best wrestler ever in an Olympic final, so yeah our media will follow him to the grave. Novikov's name usually comes with him. (Greco's popularity here is 10 times smallar than freestyle anyway) Ramazanov had a shoulder surgery recently (ironically he won his Olympic gold because of someone else's failed shoulder surgery) wrestling fans here are dying to see someone takes revenge against Ramazanov, that's not happening in 2025. maybe next year. no this is not new, this is an ancient rule in UWW/FILA. you can't wrestle for a 3rd country nor move back to your old NOC, once you switch, that's for the rest of your career. in recent history I can't remember any wrestler competing for 3 NOCs. so I assume they are strict about this one.

based on what I read on the handbooks, for the first time we have restrictions on the number of teams in team sports. this is what I found (not necessarily 100% accurate) as we know in half of these sports only a few countries register to participate. probably even less than that quota number. but it will be a big deal in some sports and will deny some weaker countries to participate. OCA was playing with this idea for a while and applied it in couple of sports in Hangzhou. this is the right thing to do, still not perfect but better than nothing, nobody wants to see Afghanistan women's volleyball team or Maldives women's handball team in the Games. actually having a qualification method somehow encourages average/above-average teams to participate. Water polo / 8 men + 6 women apparently the Asian Aquatics Championship in India will act as the qualifier Baseball / 8 men top 8 from Asian ranking of 31 December 2025 Softball / 8 women apparently top 8 from the 2025 Asian Cup in China Basketball / 12 men + 12 women top 12 from the FIBA Asia Ranking (date not mentioned) 3x3 Basketball / 16 men + 16 women top 16 of FIBA 3x3 National Federations Ranking for U23 category (date not mentioned) Cricket / 10 men + 8 women (not official) officially everything is a TBD, but other official sources claims those numbers, most probably based on the T20 ranking. Football / TBD Handball / 12 men + 8 women no qualification method mentioned, I also couldn't find anything from the other sources, I assume the latest Asian Championship will play a role here. Field Hockey / TBD apparently everything will be decided by FIH. but the initial schedule is set for 12 teams in each gender's competition. Hockey usually had separate qualification tournaments in past. Kabaddi apparently there is no limitation on the number of teams in this sport, it seems they do not expect more than 12 teams in each gender. Rugby / 12 men + 8 women no qualification method mentioned Volleyball / 16 men + 16 women no qualification method mentioned

wrestling is always my priority but it sucks big time having 3 big WCHs (big in my book) at the same time. have to prepare myself for a sleepless long week btw what's the latest update on Bulgarian big names ? are they gone for good ? or will be back next year ? any sign of one side (the federation or them) giving up ? we hear news about them almost everyday the last I read in our media is that Novikov and Ramazanov (why him?! he has problems too ?) are thinking about switching NOC and representing somewhere else. which is not correct, they can't do that. it's either Bulgaria or retirement for them. I don't feel sympathy for mercenaries but Milov will be missed though . I was looking forward to see him in Worlds after dethroning King Artur at Euros.

I can say that was one of the most entertaining volleyball match I ever seen. probably only 2nd to 2012 men's Olympic final. (I'm sure there are lots of other great matches but only this came to mind) and Gabi's performance today was one of the best ever. maybe THE best ever. Italy almost had no plan to play under pressure, I mean no plan B because they never needed that in past 2 summers. when you win for a very long time, you usually lose when it hurts the most. hopefully they learn from this and play better tomorrow. I hope Brazilian fans don't be too hard on Julia Bergmann. that was sad watching her cry after the match. btw I know about injuries on both sides (Ana Cristina, Degradi etc) but can someone tell me why C. Bosetti is not with Italy anymore ? and Carol (the middle blocker) for Brazil. retired from the NT? injured? not good enough anymore ?

yeah that's weird I wonder if Japan being weak in 1000m events had anything to do with this decision. I mean it's not like they didn't try to make the events for Japan-friendly. they dropped events from sports like Boxing, Kurash, JJ (where Japan is weak) and added an extra event for Karate.

technically that's not correct, the IOC officially dropped wrestling from the program back in 2013. the iOC under Rogge had a different rule (which I think was enforced just once before king Tommy marching in with his optional host sports idea), they had to drop a sport to make room for another one. that was mandatory few months later they had to vote about the new sport, which wrestling won by defeating other candidates like Squash and Baseball/softball . so technically wrestling was out of the program for few months. back then the IOC had a clear and transparent process about this, (not great but at least transparent) before a certain dictator makes everything behind-the-closed-door-kind-of-thing

oh I missed this. it's really weird that they are considering it a different event, it's the same event with a different format. (it's like having the basketball tournament in direct elimination and call it something else) actually I somehow prefer this speed 4 format, I wonder if OCA just tried to do something funny or this means the IFSC is leaning toward using this format more in the future ? (and maybe one day at the Olympics/World Champs)

full list of 2026 Asian Games events in a PDF format OCA did last minute changes before so this is not 100% final, let's say 99% final Sports Program.pdf

one more weird thing about the programme, there will be no 1000m events in canoeing. I assume the lake/course/whatever they are preparing for the games is short, so the maximum distance is 500m. actually all canoeing events in Nagoya will be 500m with the exception of women's C1 which is 200m. therefore both MC1-1000 and MK1-1000 had been replaced with 500m events. they also added two mixed events for the first time, K2-500 and C2-500 ================== also, athletics will have two more events comparing to the 2028 Olympics program. both Marathon racewalking events (42km) will be there too alongside half marathon racewalking (which is an Olympic event)

I never really got the idea of having lightweight events in rowing, we just do not separate athletes based on their bodyweights in other similar sports. not sure why and how Rowing had this tradition (it's out of the Olympics now and probably will be extinct in few years) but as long as it exists it's fitting for the Asian Games for the reasons you explained, I mean only LWT single sculls. other events should be open weight IMO. this is probably the only change that will favor Iran in Nagoya. all other changes in other sports will hurt our medal chance. (none of the new events will give us anything)

no, it's a bit similar to the previous games (and 2024 Olympics), 7 men and 7 women events in classic rowing they just added more lightweight events to make it more east asian friendly! both eight events are replaced by Lwt single sculls. (probably to massively reduce the number of rowers) also replaced M4- with LM4- and W4X with LW4X

actually that's much worse there will be two individual jumping events, one for heights of 140-150 cm and another one for 150-155 cm ! never heard of such a thing and yes it's like Kata/Kumite in Karate, Kyorugi/Poomsae in Taekwondo, Taolo/Sanda in Wushu or Rifle/Pistol/Shotgun in shooting.

that's the kind of news you expect to hear from him. injury news.

diving within aquatics is a normal thing. much more than that they already attached soft-tennis (completely different sport) to tennis now they made it worse. Cricket wasn't in the original program (Japan wasn't interested) but they somehow made Japan interested. all of a sudden they also decided to add MMA. to make room for two new sports without breaking their rules. they created a new "Combat sports" including Kurash, Jujitsu and now MMA which also opens a spot for the new sport of Cricket. they did that before in 2022 by adding 5-6 sports under the name of "Mind sports" or something like Mechanical sports in 2018. the OCA regulation says they should have all sports from the previous (and not the next) Olympic + 1 sport from each region (5 in total) + 2 picked by the host country + 2 picked up by the OCA. that's 41 this time, we had 32 in Paris. that was the original list before reshaping the list and adding Cricket and MMA 5 regional sports: Wushu (east), Kabaddi (south), Sepaktakraw (Southeast), Jujitsu (west) and Kurash (central) 2 Japan sports: Karate and Baseball/softball 2 OCA sports: Esports and Squash

I didn't want to write anything in this forum anymore but OK f..k it. I managed to get the full list of events. not a PDF file to send but I can tell you anything you want to know about any sport. it will be 460 events 217 for men, 204 for women plus 39 mixed/open events in 41 sports and 68 disciplines keep in mind OCA has a weird way of counting the sports. they have a rule about not having more than 41 sports in the games, so they sometimes put some completely different sports in one category to circle around their own rules !!!

a new name appears on ITA's list, two time Olympics Champion in Taekwondo, Ulugbek Rashitov is now suspended for whereabouts failures. they found a way to be "clean" during the competition but this out-of-competition tests caught them sometimes. this is the 3rd NT member of Uzbek taekwondo team getting caught in past few months and this is the biggest one.

based on the report I read there will be 28 shooting events in Nagoya. 12 men, 12 women and 4 mixed. I assume 6 individual Olympic events in each gender + team events for all one of them + mixed events in air pistol, air rifle and both Trap and Skeet . but since OCA didn't publish anything official I assume there are still talks. for example Asian Wushu Federation claims they managed to bring back two Sanda events (they were being dropped at first)

and that was a beauty. good for him. looks like he was less injured this season and actually played few matches (or more than a few) for his club. there are some news that 2 or 3 local clubs here are trying to take him back from Poland. hopefully he stays in Poland. our football league (which is more like gladiator battles league) is the last thing you want to watch. the most unwatchable sporting competition

IWF made a little adjustment to the new weight categories https://iwf.sport/2025/05/08/update-on-iwf-bodyweight-categories/ we were supposed to have 60kg, 65kg, 71kg, 79kg, 88kg, 98kg, 110kg, +110kg but now 98kg is being replaced by 94kg to me, this indicates there is a very good chance they pick 65, 79, 94, 110 and +110 for the Olympics.

one of local media here published a list of events for 2026 Asian Games, I still can't see anything on OCA website or another reliable source but since they were supposed to finalize the list today or tomorrow I somehow believe it. it's a bit similar to Indonesia 2018 where the host country dropped lots of events because they weren't good in them! Karate will gain a event while Wushu (Sanda), Taekwondo, Kurash, Jujitsu will lose some. only 13 events for Boxing, 14 for Weightlifting. no non-Olympic weights in Wrestling looks like Shooting will keep team events (they were supposed to be dropped) and we will have Canoe mixed events but it's better to wait for OCA official announcement. it's terrible they wait until 16 months before the Games to announce the list of events