MHSN

I think Liu Huanhua changed everything by winning the gold at 102kg. now Chinese coaches probably seriously consider sending him to Paris. he is only the 2nd Chinese weightlifter to win a world title at a plus 100kg weight division. and our coaches did the same mistake again and again, starting low and then a massive jump for the 2nd/3rd attempts. it worked well for Javadi but that was an exception. most of them fail. if Motamedi doesn't recover in time for Paris we have no medal chance in this weight. Dehdar is such a nice guy and I like him a lot personally but he is just not good enough.

of course it does count, only two ranking tournaments are left, this and VNL next year both Canada and Cuba are not in top 11 at the moment. that's the minimum you need to qualify. even 11th might not be enough but we will know for sure after the qualifiers. (if any low rank teams qualify directly or not) and it's always possible to re-add Russia somewhere before the Olympics. yeah I know unlikely but not impossible

our NOC finally published the full list of delegation. more or less the same numbers with some changes (additions). but in total it will be 211 male and 78 female athletes 289 is not our smallest delegation ever but we had something like 380 last time in Indonesia. this is disappointing but not surprising considering the financial crisis and all other problems the country had faced in the past 5 years. improvement was out of the question, at best we could keep our past level which apparently didn't happen. even though the final list is much better than the original list, they added some deserving athletes at the end

Winning a World Championship title is a big deal. even in non-Olympic weights but she looked injured and that CJ lift didn't help her injury at all. maybe not that wise considering she is a medal favorite in Paris next year. but maybe 3 WCh gold medals worth the pain

unfortunately the rules aren't clear the "rule" says countries with 3 or more maximum doping sanctions (4years suspension) will be banned for sure but most guys don't get the max 4 years suspension. for example Rejepov of TKM didn't (he accepted his fault and received 3 years) in this case IWF can exclude them from the Olympics or reduce their quotas. which is terrible, the penalty should be clear but it's not in this case btw we might have another world champion from group B , 399kg total from Jang Yeon Hak sounds good enough for a podium finish.

he was weighted 95.81 today. almost the max he could to compete at 96kg. but yeah he is almost guaranteed a quota at 89kg. so he only needs to cut just once, for the Olympics itself.

I also think looking at his body it won't be easy for him to cut weight. @thepharoah should know better but at least for now I think he is going 89kg but I might be wrong but I don't think 395kg will be enough for medal in Paris. lots of favorites didn't show their best yet. some of them are easily capable of lifting +400kg total. and some guys like Nurudinov might cut weight from 109kg.

Adiletuly is also banned and should be removed and Abokahla is going to 89kg (he has a good position in the ranking already) , his 102kg ranking doesn't matter great gold medal for Egypt but I was more impressed with the other Egyptian guy, the 18 years old who finished 4th.

Iran and Malaysia are tied on everything, it comes down to the number of yellow cards. How do you know who is qualified ? because the AFC yet to publish the official report . I watched the match and I count 4+1 (one for the coach) yellow cards. that's one more than Malaysia but Iran is filing a protest, one of Uzbek players received 2 yellow cards but the ref didn't show him the red. most probably it won't lead to anything but maybe that's the reason AFC is not publishing the report.

Sidakov wasn't on the entry list when I checked it few hours ago but now he is there of course personally I'm against banning athletes for non-sporting related reasons so I'm glad everybody is allowed to wrestle. but they set a criteria and didn't stand on it. even they rejected Sidakov, Mamiashvili forced them to include his name too. this is another evidence that Mamiashvili has the whole UWW in his pocket edit: UWW officially confirmed that https://uww.org/article/olympic-champs-sadulaev-sidakov-uguev-headline-ain-freestyle-world-team

so our pathetic team is 99% out because of receiving too many yellow cards. not really surprised, I knew this team sucks but still not being in top 16 of AFC is a total disaster

There is s rumor circling around that the great Sadulaev is not in yet. UWW head of social media had a tweet saying nothing is confirmed about the Russians (specially Sadulaev who once participated in one of Putin's things) and we will know for sure only on Friday! On other hands Russian sources keep repeating that all of them including Sidakov are going! Olympic champ Sidakov and 92kg guy V. Valiev are NOT in the entry list published by UWW What a mess UWW should did all this vetting process months ago.

actually Zanni is 9th, the Kazakh guy Churkin is 100% out, he didn't participate here and also facing a doping ban. participating in this tournament is mandatory, I think there is no point to keep the other absentee guys in the ranking. specially guys like Churkin and Rejepov who are also banned for doping. (it's also very possible that their countries TKM and KAZ receive a ban but that's not a sure thing yet)

what a pleasant surprise gold in an Olympic weight after 5 years. that was a very strong field with only Karlos Nasar missing. we knew Javadi is good but not this good , this is his first year in the new weight. and now it's clear why coaches kicked that moron Rostami out of the team. of course he needs to lift more (mostly in snatch) if he wants to win a medal in Paris but that's next year's problem, for now he is the World Champion

I don't think we will have a Group B in Paris (since it's just 12 weightlifters) he has to come up with another tactic

This time a World Record from Group B and guess who ? the man who re-invented this tactic, Rahmat Erwin Abdullah he will most probably take the total gold medal but his total record is not that unbeatable. I wonder if he is moving to 81 kg for the Asian Games ? or that was just one tournament in this weight because he didn't want to cut weight twice in two weeks ? @Griff88 nevertheless it's insane to break the World Record in your first competition in the new category. he is surely lighter than 81kg.

@Vic Liu will Shi Zhiyong lift anything in this competition ? or it will be another no show ? who is supposed to be your 1st guy at 73kg ? Chen Lijun maybe if Shi doesn't make it and, do you already know which guys will participate at the Asian Games?

we always had some favorites preferring group B to avoid all group A tensions but that was only a few number. this year this is happening a lot I might be wrong but I have a theory, in previous tournaments you should finalize your entry record 1 day before the start in the general meeting but nowadays they submit their entry records online and if I'm not wrong they had to finalize it on 21 August. maybe that was a bit early. some weightlifters were facing minor injuries and their coaches didn't know if they will be 100% ready 20 days later. so they just decided to play safe. I can't believe all these guys submitted very low entries intentionally to not be in Group A

we never had a World Champion from Group C, did we ? well there is a first for everything

Tunisia, best African team in the World Ranking just lost 3-1 to Cameroon at the African Championships quarterfinal. it will be super weird to finish 5th (best case scenario for TUN) in Africa and still qualify for the Olympics if Cameroon beats Egypt (to be accurate the winner of EGY/MAR match) they might have a chance to qualify eventually. but this is a weird tournament, Cameroon lost to Libya in the preliminary round and host Egypt also lost 3-0 to Algeria. Cameroon do not participate at the OQ next month, so this is the end of the road for them. they only can win the next 2 matches (and the African title) and hope for Tunisia and Egypt to lost enough points. right now TUN has 178, Egypt has 149 and 135 for CMR but those points will get updated soon with today result. Cameroon will be something like 15-20 behind tunisia

I'm watching some supernatural movies recently. I think the guy is possessed by a demon that's the only way I can explain his decisions.

I was hoping for a Latvia-Lithuania final because that would help lots of people in my country to finally understand these are two different countries we got that LAT-LTU game, but nobody watches the 5th place game.

I believe this is the first time and that's weird. Indian wrestling federation is suspended too, I wonder if OCA and UWW reach the same agreement in that sport or UWW is just too bad to even think about it

that was China B team. (and Japan B team) Thailand is good though, but not that good to beat China A