MHSN

lots of reasons as you already discussed about people in Afghanistan mostly think there were some behind the scene deals with army leaders etc with Taliban. (town by town, I mean not in general) they gave up fighting in return of having a role in future armies. even though that's a bit hard to believe, one most be extremely stupid (like US government) to trust Taliban's promises. Afghan army leaders knew Taliban very well but that's what people "think" as far as I know Afghan Army had something like 350,000 soldiers while Taliban has something like 80,000 (maximum estimation) how come that's even possible?! personally I think that was because they didn't trust the leaders in Kabul. when USA and NATO left (or said they will leave) they just saw no reason to fight because they will lose after all. probably having 1000 US soldiers + equipment in Afghanistan would give them confidence to fight back. I think most people don't know few things about Ashraf Ghani and how he became the president. Afghanistan has something like 30 millions population but only 3 millions voted in 2019 and Ghani won the election by just 923,000 votes (his opponent never accepted the defeat and considered it rigged) that's unbelievable less than 1 million you can imagine people lost hope in this "democracy" (which was corrupt and not working well) long time ago. the same goes to the soldiers

from what I read and hear, it seems even the 11th player also decided to sit down, it was like 11 players vs empty goal this is probably a world record of something. a county falling in such a short time. and as expected Mr Ashraf Ghani already fled the country. some big names like Hamid Karzay, Abdullah Abdullah and G. Hekmatyar decided to stay and "trust" Taliban. I wouldn't do that but let's hope no bloodshed. today morning Taliban promised to not enter Kabul for now. today evening Taliban entered the presidential palace. very trustworthy

the answer is simple. they can't go school (after the certain age) , no college, can't work (except certain jobs like teachers, nurses) among other improvements. from what I heard when they closed the Kabul university today, lots of the students said goodbye forever, they know they can't and won't go back. specially women Taliban is not going to enter Kabul, at least not for now. they can wait few days for the government to surrender, they also don't want to trade fire with foreign troops (still in Kabul) 22 years ago 3 great countries of Pakistan, UAE and Saudi Arabia recognized Taliban. I wonder how many will recognize the "new Taliban" I assume the number is more than 3.

contacting few people. it seems Iran is really going to host this! the event will be held in Tehran (just one city) , they will use 2 stadiums (both in the same complex) outside of Tehran. here are the groups, apparently we had some changes because of withdrawals. I still wonder if all 19 teams show up. Group A: Group B: Group C: Group D:

that's the interesting part, I have absolutely no idea! I don't hear anything about this competition which is very weird. cancellation or not I would hear something about it. I did a bit of searching, absolutely no news about this. there is just a section in our volleyball federation website with the event's program. nothing else

hard to believe Iran is going to host this event in 10 days and I don't hear anything about it! I knew about hosting this but I didn't know this will start in August. really surprised to see the dates I wonder if the event is being cancelled or something? as much as I love to see Iran hosting international events this is not the right time, with +500 deaths per day (and that's just the official number, they always say the real number is twice this) Iran is in the worst possible situation since the start of the pandemic. I live 40km far from Tehran and I don't dare travel there even when I have to. it will be very surprising if 19 countries send their kids.

I don't think they are dividing teams into two groups. it's more like sending 8 teams to Host city A and 8 other teams to host city B for each week. after 3 weeks (and 12 matches) they will count all results together and top 8 advance to the QF.

here our NOC paid a small prize money the same day, few hours after the competition Gold - 10,000 Euro Silver - 5,000 Euro Bronze - 3,500 Euro but the sport ministry later will pay something like this Gold - 20,000,000 Rials = 66,000 Euro Silver - 12,500,000 Rials = 41,000 Euro Bronze - 7,500,000 Rials = 25,000 Euro BUT medalists always receive some prize money from their own province officials too. for example our gold medalist from "Shiraz" in wrestling will receive an extra 30,000 Euro. but I don't know about other provinces. I just know athletes from Tehran usually receive nothing more.

yes that's what common people say in Afghanistan, twitter is full of #sanctionpakistan but I think it's more complicated than that. yes it seems some elements of Pakistan army are supporting the Taliban but it's not like Imran Khan himself is doing that. Pakistan is probably the most complicated country in the world! nobody knows who is really in power. Pakistan is like an atomic bomb that can explode at any moment. but one thing is for sure. the Pakistani government is not strong enough, they don't even have control over their borders. that's why lots of terrorist groups find home in Pakistan.

from what I read in social media, it seems Taliban took full control of Herat, the third largest city of Afghanistan and they are going to capture Kandahar (the 2nd city) in next few hours or days. Kabul will fall in few weeks, it won't even last till the end of 2021. those corrupt politicians will fly to some western countries and poor people will remain to deal with these monsters. I bet Mr Ashraf Ghani already has his plane ready to fly personally I know more about Herat because that's close to our border and people there have more or less the same culture. so it's just heartbreaking to read such news. reading people's reaction in social media almost makes me cry what's more disappointing is that the whole world doesn't care. this was easily preventable. so I guess we won't see Afghanistan at the Olympics anymore. but but but the generous Tommy Bach and his friends will invite few shitty random athletes from Europe with Afghan heritage for the next refugee team to give """hope""" and happiness to all refugees around the world. problem solved.

then let me tell you how uneducated you are. this is the 7th times in a row that Iran is sending a team to the Asian Women's Handball Championship. only Japan, Kazakhstan and South Korea are doing it for the 7th consecutive times. Iran send teams regularly to the Asian Championships almost in all team sports. as for Afghanistan, women's sport is very new there. but they started sending teams. even though I'm afraid we won't see them in international competition from 2022 or max 2023 when the beloved Taliban takes over of everything. probably not even their men's teams.

I just finished watching the 2021 Asian Women's Handball Championship draw Group A) Group B) no China! (and no PRK obviously) also some mediocre teams like Thailand, Vietnam and Australia didn't participate but since JPN and KOR finished in top 12 of the last WCh, Asia will have 6 quotas available that means we will have at least 2 debutantes at the world stage. JPN, KOR and KAZ will grab 3 of those quotas for sure, UZB also once participated at the World Championship and I believe they will pick one of those 3 remaining quotas. Jordan as host had the right to pick Group A or B (what a stupid rule) and they picked B. another thing, per IHF rules, with 6 quotas available, 12 teams MUST participate at the continental Championships. so if one team withdraws, Asia will lose one of its quotas. (I don't know to who? another wild card probably)

@phelps you have to give credit to this guy, I never saw such a persistent troll. he never gives up on cancelling the Olympics (or anything similar to that) when he fails on "his mission" for Tokyo 2020, he focused on Paralympics 2020 and Beijing 2022. the next is probably Paris 2024. he never gives up

can't remember an Olympic Champion being upset on the podium

I already wrote a long post about it somewhere else, I'm not going to repeat what I already wrote 1) I think 6 out of 10. it wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. only 7 medals is indeed disappointing, no medal for our female athletes was very disappointing. but on the other hand winning 3 gold medals considering all the problems we had in past 4-5 years was a good result. specially since we left two of our best gold medal chances at home. 2) surprises: first ever medal in shooting which was gold! 6 months ago we didn't even expect Reza Geraei to qualify for the Olympics. so him winning the gold was indeed surprising. heartbreaks, our great Champion Yazdani (probably the most popular athlete here) losing to Taylor in last 20 seconds was really heartbreaking. the next day was like a national mourning day. Hamideh Abbasli going home empty handed was also heartbreaking, she was our best chance for having a female gold medalist. she even beat the eventual gold medalist but got injured in her last group match, and most probably will need another surgery on her knee the biggest disappointment was MH Mohammadian in wrestling. I still can't believe how the hell he wrestled like that. that was our strongest weight, and we had 4-5 top wrestlers we didn't even know which one to send! 3) Iranian sport officials never announce a target, so whatever happens they consider it as success ! even the disastrous 2008 Beijing was a success for the guy in charge at the time 4) almost impossible to invest on anything in current financial situation. and the pandemic is still taking lives. the best we can do is to keep what we already have.

It wasn't a great Olympics for Iran, I was expecting more medals but less gold medals, so I can say I'm OK with our result 3 G, 2 S, 2 B. actually in term of quality of medals this is our 2nd best ever result after London 2012 with 7 gold medals. but we lost two of our serious gold medal chances before the start for stupid reasons and some of our medal prospects didn't even qualify for the games. so it was supposed to be a bad tournament even before the start. and the first week was mixed up with political stupid discussions. at least some better results in 2nd week erased all those bad memories. but I was expecting 1 or 2 gold medals, while our biggest champion failed to repeat his gold from Rio, we had two completely surprising gold medal winners. my country is going through a very tough time, these past 4-5 years were really hard for everybody including our athletes (that's why we had lots of athletes leaving the country), I believe most of our sport federations had something like 20% of the budget they had in 2012. (even though that hurt our minor sports even much more) so it was expected to not see an improvement from 2016. still adding Karate to the Olympics was supposed to be a big deal for us to make up for other sports problems. still it was a great two weeks, another good memory of Olympics in my life to remember forever. I hope for no more global disaster to see Paris 2024 in a better situation.

The Saudi guy was leading but then he kicked to the neck (or throat ) of our Karateka . in this sport you can't kick or punch with maximum power, there must be some control on it and in that action Tareq Hamdi completely knocked out Ganjzadeh and made him unconsciousness for few minutes. he got disqualified for that, that word "Hansoku" you can see in the results section means disqualification

you clearly didn't watch the final it wasn't like a normal 4-0 win.

and he didn't look like the Olympic Champion. he was more like someone who lost the Olympic final I'm sure nobody wants to win the gold in this way but after few days people will forget the details. only the final result remains forever.

I really hope Ganjzadeh is OK, that was a terrible way to win the gold medal

yes I saw this Kyrgyz guy in two tournaments recently and he is really good and improving fast. won't be surprised if he wins a world title (at least a world medal) in near future. also I believe Bajrang is not in his best shape, I was really surprised when our guy Ghiasi was actually close to beat him. I mean if he was "smart" he could wait the clock to get that 1 passivity point and could defend the rest of the match. but he decided to attack and we knew he is not good in this. he had hard time to score even against Tunisia! but our biggest disappointment happened in 97kg. before the Olympics I would considered this guy as our 3rd "safe medal" in Tokyo. we have 3 very good wrestlers here and we were sure each one of them can beat anybody in the world (except the great Sadulaev) but then Mohammadian disappointed everybody by losing to Odikadze. I just don't know what was wrong with him. I assume he was thinking too much ahead of himself and was probably already thinking about Sadulaev. and that means no gold medal in freestyle wrestling . first time since 2008 I thought we have a good team this time, at least in 3 upper weights but there was something wrong with the team. 1 silver and 1 possible bronze (Zare still has to beat China) is a terrible result. the good thing is there will be a world championship in 2 months. to clear some of these bad memories.

it was really heartbreaking to see our champion crying like that. he was always calm but today he was completely broken after the defeat, he had lost twice to Taylor before with exactly the same scenario. this time he tried a different gameplan which was working will until that moment. now it's like a national mourning day here. and I put the blame on media, TV commentators etc. even before the Olympic they were only talking about this day and this match against Taylor. like nobody else matters. Yazdani is a great wrestler but he is human after all. that was too much pressure to handle. he is still 26, I just hope he doesn't think about retirement, he still has a long career ahead of him. PS: no Iranian wrestler had even won the Olympic gold twice. there were extra pressure on Yazdani to become the first one doing that.

the weight-in is being held 2 hours before the start of the morning session. those who advance to the 2nd day (repechage or main draw) will have another weight-in the next day. most of these wrestlers walk around 4-5 kg above their competition weight, some of them even more. they usually cut weight "brutally" just to make the weight and gain the weight back again after couple hours. UWW is trying to force wreslters to NOT cut weight with these rules. UWW wants them to move up weight instead of cutting for the lower weight. but that's the culture in this sport and they can't change it easily. which means the first day morning session is usually VERY tough for those who cut weight. specially the first match, we always say here that the first match is always the toughest. Uguev was probably 60kg or more when he wrestled Atri in the semifinal. (Atri himself cuts weight too) he had to participate in weight-in once again today morning. which means he needs another recovery. but this time he has much more time to recover since there was no morning session for him.

so the great refugee athlete Hamoon Derafshipour is eliminated now. I guess having his wife as coach didn't help much. always good to see cheaters and liars loosing. he would make the Iranian team if he was good enough anyway.

I think it will 50/50. highly depends on Uguev's physical situation. not sure if people watched him yesterday but he won both of his qualification matches in the last 10 seconds. he was dead tired and 2pts down against Abdullaev (UZB) but still somehow worked his magic for a 4pts throw. (mostly Abdullaev's mistake) he was better in afternoon when he wrestled out guy Atri in the semifinal. so I assume he will be better today against Ravi (still he had to cut weight again for today's weight-in) if they had to wrestle yesterday morning I would give 80% chance to Ravi to win the match but now he had his rest and recovery and will be more prepared. still Ravi can make everybody gas. but he just has to stop giving up cheap points like he did against Sanayev. Uguev is not going to get pinned like that.