MHSN

that was just OK, some good results mixed with some disappointing results. our top wrestlers (2024 Olympic/World medalists) were exempt here but still it was an important part of our trials for the 2025 World Championships and this tournament made it clear that we are weak in certain weights. our trial system is so complicated, something like rocket science , very hard to understand

11th actually and now

no it wasn't they must really hate this sport in China

maybe just having fun ? not just them, Afghan and Qatari athletes did the same. but yeah at least these NOCs sent just 1 tourist to be in the list. weird to send 4 tourists

The slopestyle event looks very competitive half the snowboarders simply go to the finish line without a single jump or something

IHF should ban Denmark for the next World Championship , playing against this team is not a fair fight. they are just too good

it's really hard for OCA to find a host for the Asian Winter Games. no game in 2021, even 2025 Harbin was announced relatively very late. (only 1.5 years ago) OCA even accepted Saudi Arabia's crazy bid to host the 2029 event in middle of a desert! (at least on paper that looks crazy) therefore it's totally up to the host country to pick the events. this is really bad for the event's prestige but I assume OCA had no other option.

apparently our NOC rejected the winter sport federation request to send a bigger delegation. they published a list of just 14 athletes. 8 in CC skiing, 2 in Alpine and 4 in SkiMo. equal number of male and female athletes in each sport.

and apparently the knockout round will be the same as the men's tournament one team from Pool A and H => semifinal the same from B & G and then C/F and D/E it's highly possible to see JPN/SRB, ITA/POL, CHN/BRA and USA/TUR in the quarterfinal. only few teams are capable of upsetting those teams. it's a great format that you can even predict the quarterfinalists

I wonder if anybody in the world cares about the team ranking in weightlifting but our federation does in past 10-12 years Iran lost so many medals because of this. most of our weightlifters start (mostly in CJ) with a very low weight (usually the minimum they can because of the entry record) to make sure they have a total and get some ranking points for the team and then jump something like 10 kilos for the medal. it usually kills their medal chance. I believe we could win the gold at 96, silver at 109 and a medal (not sure what color) at 102kg but lost them because of this super stupid strategy. IWF commentators always laugh at Iranian weightlifters and their weird weigh selection strategy. it was an OKish tournament for the Iranian team. winning 1 silver and 3 bronze is not great but not bad either. Yousefi and Davoudi both making their last attempts and kicking that piece of crap Bahraini mercenary out of the podium made my day. unfortunately Yousefi is weak in Snatch to be a treat for the total gold medal. but he lifted 262 in CJ yesterday, I believe only few weightlifters in history did that before. it looked like he might be capable of lifting 268 which will be the best CJ lift ever.

here, it may be geo-blocked though https://olympics.com/en/sport-events/2024-iwf-world-weightlifting-championships-manama/replays

each one of them will be in one separate path playing the top seed team (most probably a strong team) in semifinal away from home. so no none of those weak teams will qualify.

Kazakhstan won two golds yesterday and today but there is something interesting about both of these guys. Antropov and Adiletuly they both failed a doping test in 2023, ITA gave them a 1.5 years suspension which expired right few days before this tournament. Kazakhstan never stopped doing their "thing" whenever Guy A failed the test, the brought up Guy B doing the same until he fails too. then move to guy C. now with ITA's help they are even recycling their already exposed cheaters. yet they never received a real and serious ban for this. well I guess they know where and how to expend their money. paying the right guy.

two more golds for North Korea today , 8 golds out of 10 so far their gold medal run on the men's side finished today, they have one more guy at 89 but Karlos will win the gold tomorrow. I know China is sending a 2nd tier team but still everybody expected more from them.

Things happened too fast, surprised everybody. the future is so unpredictable. so far these groups are trying to act properly but so did Taliban at first. we will see their true color in next few weeks/months. Bashar Asad was a murderer and criminal but he wasn't extremist. these guys can be both murderer and extremist. but there are lots of groups involved. still it's not totally clear who will get the power ultimately. it's highly possible to see a war between these groups Turkey is sponsoring some (most) of these groups, so the future will be hard for the Kurds too. Turkey will push these groups to conquer the Kurdish parts too. but I think the regime in Iran was the biggest loser here, they spent billions of dollars (at least 30 according to rumors) to keep this piece of crap in power. he was supposed to pay it back someday. now they have to rethink their strategy, everything if falling apart for them. (which is not necessarily a bad thing to be honest) anyway it was a very hard few years for the Syrian people and the future doesn't look brighter. I just hope I'm wrong and something good comes out of this. maybe these guys have really changed Syrian people suffered a lot already.

North Korea is dominating the lower weights with 3rd gold medal in a row, this time with another World Record. and they can bring someone with zero international experience who almost broke the CJ and total World records.

IOC finally announced the full list of events https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/Youth-Olympic-Games/Dakar-2026/2024-12-Dakar-2026-Event-Programme.pdf Beach wrestling no individual apparatus events in Gymnastics

big decision by IWF new weight categories, 8 for men and 8 for women from June 2025 Men 60kg, 65kg, 71kg, 79kg, 88kg, 98kg, 110kg, +110kg Women 48kg, 53kg, 58kg, 63kg, 69kg, 77kg, 86kg, +86kg and this means all World records will be erased AGAIN ! https://iwf.sport/2024/12/03/iwf-executive-board-meeting-in-manama-brn-december-2-3-main-decisions/ I think that was a good decision, 10 weights was too much. but erasing the current World Records was the down side of this decision. but does this mean they have some agreements with IOC to have all these weights at the Olympics ? that looks unlikely though but looking at the numbers and the gap between weights none of them look like a "non-Olympic weight" at least that's what IWF thinks.

big big news regarding Olympic bronze medalist and two time World Champion Zurabi Datunashvili https://ita.sport/news/the-ita-acknowledges-cas-add-decision-sanctioning-wrestler-zurabi-datunashvili-for-anti-doping-rule-violations/ to be honest everything was suspicious about this guy, his sudden improvement since 2021, his body, his sudden retirement in 2023 . its great to see him finally getting caught. they will reallocate the medals later after the end of the process but his Olympic bronze will go to Ivan Huklek, I think that will be the first ever wrestling medal for Croatia his 2021 World title will go Maskevich and the 2022 gold goes to Bisultanov Bisultanov will benefit more than anybody else, he also gets a bronze from 2021 and Kessidis will get a bronze from 2022.

official startlist https://iwf.sport/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2024/11/2024_IWF_WCH_StartBook.pdf

Russia and Iran will meet in both Greco (22 November) and freestyle (23 November) in Moscow this weekend. not a serious competition but, there is prize money and both teams are bringing lots of World and Olympic medalists. our Greco team is more complete, only 2-3 guys are missing but in freestyle this is somehow half of our A team. for Russia it's hard to say what's exactly their A team right now because of the suspension. but this team is close to be the A team without the best of the best Sadulaev.

crazy week in Asia, KSA lost to Indonesia, so called Asian Champion Qatar lost 5-0 to UAE and Korea dropped 2pts against Palestine once again. Australia was lucky to escape another defeat vs Bahrain by a late goal. Japan will most probably secure the qualification spot (as the first team) in March. Iran also has 16pts so far but the performance is far from good. our team still plays terrible but somehow manages a way to win matches. Group C is really interesting, behind Japan we have Australia with 7pts and 4 more teams with 6pts! everything is possible, BRN, INA and CHN they all have a chance to even clinch a direct qualification spot. Bahrain could end this week with 6pts but some crazy things happened in extra time for them and they ended up with just 1 !

in a sport like wrestling, if you are #1 in your country and win World or Olympic medals you can make money otherwise you get nothing. that's not the case in table tennis. being #2 in your country behind the world #1 (who happens to be from the same country) is a terrible situation. you know you are good enough to win medals but someone always blocks your way, most of these Russian wrestlers try to win the Russian nationals and win medal for Russia (which pays much better) but when they realize they are getting old and they can't beat a certain local wrestler they move to somewhere else. that's still bad but I don't really blame them, nobody wants to end his career without a major medal. it's not a bad idea if UWW somehow follows what IJF does. but I don't think that happens anytime soon.

It was a very weird game against the weirdest team in the world, North Korea it looked very easy at half time, 3-0 lead. but then a very early stupid red card in the 2nd half. 2 dumb own goals, Taremi missing a penalty ... and then in last 25 minutes PRK missed something like 6-7 golden opportunities to tie the match. have to admit Iran was very lucky to collect all 3 pts. the 2nd half was probably one of the worst matches I ever seen. despite this terrible match, things look good in the standing, 13pts after 5 matches and I believe 3 more pts will do.

you are right but those countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan also spend huge money on their own program. I mentioned some countries because they simply forget developing young wrestlers and focused only on buying foreigners. which is really sad because some of these countries used to be pretty good. I always use Bulgaria as an example which was a superpower not long time ago. btw I wonder how this will affect Bahrain, they simply has no local wrestler. they bought a full team of 6-7 Russian wrestlers in freestyle. now they can use only 2 of them for each tournament and they have to send 2 homegrown wrestlers with them (that number will increase to 4 from 2027). I assume they will pick up two random guys from the street