MHSN

Startlist https://iwf.sport/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2023/08/2023-IWF-WCH_START-BOOK.pdf

Freestyle entries https://uww.org/article/freestyle-entries-released-2023-world-championships and again no Russia how come they were registered in Greco (with a weird team) but not in men's and women's freestyle ? my guess ? their top guys got rejected by UWW and therefore they decided to boycott the event or something like that. (or maybe the list is just not complete and they will be added later )

oh thanks. that was nice of you. but that's not going to happen we have a very weak team this time. back in 2019 lots of weird miraculous things happened in our favor to qualify surprisingly. this year we need much more than just a miracle but who knows, this is sport after all. nothing is impossible. maybe the whole Brazilian team fall sleep and miss the buss

Kenya beat Egypt today 3-0 and they clearly deserved the spot but look at their ranking points. Kenya has 162 and Egypt has 104 . it's a big gap but it should be much much closer. keep in mind Egypt lost 50pts last year in a very unfair way simply because they didn't play a single official match last year which wasn't their fault at all. (Kenya played at the World Championship) the same happened to all AVC teams (except VNL teams) AVC created the AVC Challenge Cup to avoid that but still 50pts from last year is not coming back.

Wrong teams should play with their A teams for Continental Championships, while they are allowed to use B teams for other minor events like Pan-American Cup. of course they can send whoever they want but their results at continental Champs will be counted no matter what. Brazil used its A team for the South American Champs and I assume Canada and co will do the same for the NORCECA Champ. minor teams in other continents (especially Asia and Africa) got hurt badly by this system. all of them lost 50 points because there was no tournament to play for them in 2022. it doesn't change anything for the Olympic qualification but World Champs qualification is also based on the World Ranking and all 2nd tier Asian/African teams are already far away from the 32nd spot to qualify.

I think Kenya is qualified for the Olympics. they won the African champs today and they are #1 in Africa in the World Ranking and there is no other tournament for African teams. none of them will participate in the Olympic Qualifiers or next year VNL. so I think Kenya is 100% qualified.

no final A in Olympic events but we had a couple of 4th place finishes in the semifinals (means very close to qualify) looking at the results it seems we have a good chance to qualify few athletes at the Asian qualifiers. but I know maybe some Asian countries didn't play all their cards here

this is not new. that rule always existed (even in non-Olympic years you have to participate in continental champs to be eligible for the worlds) but UWW president had the power to bend it and he did it before. for example last year for Artur Aleksanyan. Don't count too much on this "rule" and there are RUS/BLR wrestlers on the start list already. UWW will certainly let them participate unless IOC intervenes and says something about it. not impossible but a bit unlikely IMO

Women's entries https://uww.org/article/womens-wrestling-entries-announced-2023-world-championships interestingly nobody from Russia. all of those AIN athletes are from Belarus no idea what does that mean ? they will be added later or what ?

are clubs like CSKA and Dynamo even active in wrestling ? never heard of it Russia didn't publish anything about their Greco squad. but I followed the process of their freestyle trials. can't wait to see the entry list for freestyle. I wonder if this is the same team (those who won their trials) or they have to make changes

this list is surely not final but based on my experience, we will have some changes but not too much. probably 1 or 2 changes in each weight. and some countries entered two wrestlers in each weight (only 1 will wrestle obviously) I follow some of the favorite teams (Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia) and I know this is their final list. JPN and USA entered two in each weight but I already know their final list. and of course late injuries are always possible. we just had to make a change in the freestyle team today.

2023 World Championship entries in Greco-Roman Russia (AIN) is entering a very weird squad! I don't even know half of these guys. I wonder if their better guys are banned for supporting Putin (or something like that) or they simply decided to send a bunch of nobodies ? they still have Kabaloev, Semenov and Sargsian though. https://uww.org/article/greco-roman-entries-released-2023-world-championships

oh OK, so my memory isn't that bad after all so that means we won't have much re-allocation after all and only 1 (or 2) quota per event will be awarded based on the ranking . right ?

I thought only those who advance to the final can win the quota this time for this Olympic cycle. did they change something ?? or I just remember something completely wrong ?

yep he beat our guy (who was supposed to be a gold medal chance) quite handily today's afternoon wasn't great , we had some bad defeats but still it was good overall winning 3 golds and 1 silver with one more wrestler in the final for tomorrow. I assume the team title is already guaranteed.

Iran won the team title in freestyle with 4 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze and the first day of Greco was also too good to be true 4 out 5 in the final and 1 in the bronze medal match. but I know we had most of our best guys in the first group. the 2nd group (next 5 weights) won't be this good. what a terrible day for Russia. not a single wrestler in the semifinal Russian wrestlers weren't good at all in this tournament, winning only 1 gold in men's freestyle. some people say that's because they were out of competition for a while. but that's not really correct. they had LOTS of international or national wrestling competitions to keep their guys in shape and motivated. I wonder if this is a sign that they also won't perform good at the Worlds in Belgrade ? and we still don't know if they can win the Olympic quota or not. and i assume we won't know that in time of the World Championship.

what the hell was that !! they removed Sebghatollahi before the start. simply awarding free quotas to the other shooters !

lots of interesting matches in the first medal day. Iran finished the day with 2 golds and 1 silver. but USA is leading the team race with 15 more pts because they won 5 medals . (despite winning just 1 gold medal) but tomorrow will have 3 in the final and has just one. which makes things more close for the last day. our 92kg and 125kg are expected to win the gold quite easily. that's most probably enough to win the team title. JPN and RUS won the remaining gold medals. really impressed with the Japanese kid , he won the gold last year at 61kg and now one weight down at 57kg. how is that even possible ? people usually gain weight each year at this young age but looks like it works the other way for him and I have to say Russian wrestlers are back with their old dirty tricks. 61kg semifinal was very ugly with the Russian pretending to be injured the whole time, that way he got something like 10 extra minutes to rest during the match, the refs realized he is a fraud only in the last minute and Ukrainians keep not shaking hands with whoever they don't want and luckily for them nobody cares

Water Polo draw (which is also the Olympic qualifier) Men Group A) Group B) Women

we had a RUS/UKR match in 3rd round of 79kg and the Ukrainian guy (after being beaten very badly) didn't shake hands and went the other way along with his coach. apparently nobody cared and the guy is not disqualified. (yet) looks like UWW simply ignored the rule they never really enforced before (just except when they had some other motivations )

World Junior Championships will start tomorrow in Jordan and I see both UKR and RUS/BLR (AIN) wrestlers in the brackets. I see a UKR/BLR match in the first round of 125kg. ( that will be on Thursday) and even tomorrow it's possible to see couple matches if they progress from the 1st and 2nd rounds in other weights the last time I checked shaking hands is mandatory in wrestling, not just with the wrestler, but with his coach too. UWW once took the World U17 team title away from Iran because one of our kids was crying after losing the bronze medal match and forgot to shake hands with the opponent's coach. but yeah I saw so many times the losing wrestler was so upset and went to the other way and didn't shake hand with the coach and nobody cared. They are not always very strict about it.

just switched from Cycling into this and Colombian GK proved once again how much women's football is developed

and Iran was leading 23-17 with 12 minutes to go but then they just collapsed and gave up a 10-1 run that was a complete meltdown they had a great tournament until that moment ... can't see them recover from this at this young age. That was fun until it lasted

they tied with Georgia few days ago in a friendly match therefore I was expecting some heavy defeats here. apparently I was wrong eliminating an European team is a big deal for Asian teams. in both matches they were down by 5-7 goals in middle of the 2nd half but had a couple of comebacks. and looks like these kids love drama, you should watch the last minute of their matches vs Bahrain at the Asian Champs, that was insane

yeah looks like there are some normal things nobody talks about since they are too obvious! for gymnastics apparently it's 2 years. and we have just 1 guy left with a valid licence ! (don't know for how long) personally I'm more angry on FIG, because I thought this is their only job to protect and defend the athletes. but it's like they say "goodbye, call us whenever our friend is back"