MHSN

We were expecting good results from the Greco team but they did even much better . the team title is already in the bag (by a huge huge margin) + 3 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze + 2 more finalists tomorrow and a small chance for another bronze. winning 7 or 8 medals in Greco is just great. Greco is much more universal than freestyle. we were never traditionally good in Greco-Roman, our success is recent, this is only the 2nd time in history winning the team title.

The Greco team had a nearly perfect start today, 3 out of 4 made it to the final (including a 18 years old debutante) and the other one simply lost to a much better wrestler and will wrestle for bronze. we had the strongest Greco team in the World in past few years but never won the team title with this generation. (Iran won the title in Greco just once in 2014) considering we still have 3 Olympic finalists to wrestle in next couple of days, I think we are in a very good position to win the Greco title as well. hopefully this time with more than just 2 gold medals I think 7 gold medals is within our reach, hopefully they take half of that 3 or 4 maybe

This is probably the worst tournament ever for the Iran NT since i remember, I mean even with we had a 2nd tier team in Asia we never played this bad. by some miracle Iran just survived this group and will play another match in round of 16 (I assume that will be our last match) The Philippines had 5-6 match points and in 2 of them they served out very very narrowly. and they even somehow won the match, I turned off the TV the moment the ball touched the floor. few minutes later I found out they are still playing. Philippines deserved to win this. they played great, 10 times better than my expectations. couple of their guys were unstoppable today. Iran was extremely lucky in at least 3 of those match points. Iran did good with Roberto Piazza in VNL but his decisions in this tournament were really questionable. few times that crossed my mind that maybe he is trying to lose the match. I knew he is a very good coach but after this I'm sure anymore

https://vk.com/uww_tv?z=video-226829894_456239188%2Fvideos-226829894%2Fpl_-226829894_-2

he has the best agent ever, selling him to top teams (clubs and now NT) over and over probably the most successful conman in the world

the number of surprising results in this tournament is just tooooo much looks like everybody can beat everybody

This is not something you want to see in a World Championship final Chermen Valiev was huge favorite for the gold after beating the great Zaurbek Sidakov but then this happened in the final it was his own fault, the Japanese did nothing illegal, he had to give up the point to save his knee

it's always good for the sport to see new countries winning World titles with their own homegrown athletes. Georgios Kougioumtsidis was the star of the day, he became the first Greek to win a gold in men's freestyle World Championship. he was great for 2-3 years and finally won a world medal (and not just a medal, the gold medal) unfortunately for him his natural weight 79kg is not an Olympic weight so he has to move up or move down. Kyrgyzstan also had the chance for the first gold but their guy gave up a 7-0 lead against North Korea.

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.