MHSN

1) men's basketball. quite unexpected and somehow lucky 2) lots of names. despite being one of the best teams in the world (if not the best) we will have only 3 athletes in Karate!! even USA and Kazakhstan will have more. wrestling failing to qualify a full team was also disappointing. Sajjad Mardani in Taekwondo, also Keikha in Gymnastics. but above all, Sohrab Moradi our Olympic Champion in weightlifting. if healthy he was 90% guaranteed the gold medal. it still hurts thinking about how he failed to qualify because of those stupid rules despite all the hard work.

so you still have the job, what's the plan after the Paralympics ? will you see Beijing 2022 WOG getting cancelled too ? or Paris 2024 ?

Iran also announced a female flagbearer Hanieh Rostamian (shooting) alongside Samad Nikkhah Bahrami (Basketball) completely a random pick. out of 11 female athletes, the most famous one won't be in Tokyo in time of the opening ceremony and the only one with Olympic experience will have her competition in next day tomorrow morning. they had to just pick someone randomly.

yes as I said, very similar to wrestling if you lose to one of the finalists you will have a chance in the repechage and have to win 2 matches in a 16-man draw.

host athletes will take the 4th seed and of course, something similar to wrestling with a small difference. athletes will fight the semifinal loser from the opposite side of the draw for the bronze.

when I was a kid Italy used to lose all Penalty shout outs 1990, 1994, 1998. thanks to the Netherlands (which was even worse than Italy in PK ) that curse had been lifted in 2000. at least nowadays Italy wins and loses on penalties. Italy football NT is the first team I cheered for when I was 5 or 6 (even before watching one match of our own NT) so yeah still a fan. so happy for that close win. Spain was the better team tonight though. and congrats to Italian users here.

Don't be so sure

well, some of our biggest medal chances failed to qualify (for different reasons) and we had very disappointing doping case in Karate which eliminated our world champion too. so once again it's up to wrestling to save our delegation. but on the positive side we have a better wrestling team comparing to what I was expecting 2 years ago. so I say 8 to 10.

San Marino has a realistic chance in wrestling. (thanks to the seeding which will put two heavy favorites in other side of the draw) and since all of ROT (EOR actually) serious athletes are Iranians, I can say "no medal" is the most probable outcome for them but if they end up winning a medal, that would be probably in Karate. and yes has 2 or maybe 3 good chance of medal in wrestling. I think at least one of them will win a medal.

it's almost official that we will have 67 athletes in Tokyo. or 66 if we don't count the reserve guy in fencing. 12 Basketball 12 Volleyball 11 Wrestling 6 Shooting 4 Athletics 3 Fencing (or 4) 3 Karate 3 Taekwondo 3 Weightlifting 2 Boxing 1 Badminton 1 Rowing 1 Canoeing 1 Swimming 1 Archery 1 Cycling 1 Table Tennis

When Iran announced just one flagbearer for the Games, I wasn't sure if they simply ignored Bach's stupid advice or they simply weren't aware of that. (that's completely possible with Iranian officials, sometimes they don't just read letters) unfortunately it seems they just didn't know that. and now Iran is considering having two flagbearers at the Games they already announced the name of two flagbearers for the Paralympics.

are Italy and Germany going to add some big names to their squads for the OG ? Belinelli, Hacket, Datome, Galinari ? btw Schroder was the main cheerleader in Split. what about him ? or maybe too early to ask , they just qualified tonight

so it will be Greece or Czech Republic. one of them will have the honor of playing our team in the opening game of men's basketball in Tokyo btw congrats to both teams. two great games. really enjoyed watching both games. that was a great night of basketball. most people were expecting Canada-Turkey in the final but once again most people were wrong

Our WL federation confirmed this quota and 2 hours later some official sources also reported that Iran most probably will reject it. she had a minor surgery on her hand and not really ready to participate. ( she would finish last in the competition anyway) and beside that Iran has a bad doping record in this sport. and because of that they monitor and test all weightlifters for months before sending them to international competitions. (let alone the Olympics) now they simply have to "trust" her for not using anything while she was out of the national camp. still no confirmation from our NOC, they are probably thinking that having one female weightlifter (even if she finishes last) will be good for developing women's sport here. but then that doping thing is a big deal. despite our terrible doping history we never had someone testing positive during the Olympics (or Asian Games) in past 50 years.

and Asian Water Polo Championships. even months after FINA officially awarded those quotas. our swimming federation was still saying. "don't worry, we got this. FINA will reschedule the qualifier "

my all time favorite wrestler Heiki "do nothing" Nabi is now facing 2 years ban for doping violation. Estonia still uses the quota sending another wrestler "Artur Vititin" I hated him for being extremely boring. for killing the sport with his "doing nothing" style. but I didn't know he is a cheater as well. good for him.

the question is how come it took a year and half for WT to confirm the obvious.

temporarily maybe but you have to punish the corrupt people. not the sport but I understand this is the only leverage IOC has to force them to reform.

I think the rules are clear. once you are removed from the list you can't get back into it. Iran had to remove the other guy before the deadline. but our WL federation didn't so IWF automatically picked up our 2 best ranked weightlifters and removed the rest. and that undesired weightlifter is a two time World Champion (have to say he was lucky both times but ordinary people don't understand that) I mean he wasn't a nobody. he has his own group of supporters. it wasn't easy for our WL federation to simply remove him and waiting for a miracle like this. that was risky we could end up with just 1 weightlifter in Tokyo! btw I was thinking maybe Moradi can bring this to CAS. claiming he was pregnant at the time. faking a pregnancy test or something. he had a big belly after all.

Croatia is struggling against Tunisia this is no joke. this is the elimination game

oh no problem with Greece at all, someone had to take this quota. and our guy is not even in the list to compete. this is not about having one more quota. we already have maximum 2 we could have. it was about having this guy in Tokyo. we had 3 other weightlifters in this 96kg weight above him, we could easily have 96kg quota if we wanted but our WL federation removed all 3 of them to make room for Moradi. he is not just another weightlifter, he is the world record holder. I would trade this quota with any other quota (even team sports) we got for the Olympics. just to show how important he was.

Oh My God, I don't know what to say if that really happens . our World and Olympic Champion Sohrab Moradi traveled the world to make up for his injury time and collect enough points to qualify. he ended up one place above this Greek guy. they removed him from the list because Iran qualified two other weightlifters in other weights. this means he would qualify without doing anything. they just had to remove that Hashemi guy (109kg) from the list and just WAIT I can't believe we lost our best chance for the gold because of another Iranian weightlifter. one of the greatest Persian poets once said "The beloved is at home and we wander about in the world"

WT ranking for 1 July is out. https://worldtkd.simplycompete.com/playerRankingV2?limit=25&pageNo=1&month=6&year=2020&rankingCategoryId=11ea9376-9371-e3ef-aefb-0af9674366aa&subCategory1=11ea9376-4530-2b19-aefb-0af9674366aa&rankingTypeId=11ea9376-1b54-af01-aefb-0af9674366aa this ranking will be used for the Olympic seeding. we can already have an idea about how the brackets will look like. still it's not 100% guaranteed because NOCs still can change their athletes and send someone with a different rank but that's very unlikely at this point. by looking at the 58kg and 68kg seeding (where Iran has competitors) the brackets will be something like this * host nation will be seeded #4 58kg KOR vs PHI VS ESP vs POR JPN vs ETH VS RUS vs TUN ---- ITA vs HUN VS AUS vs THA IRI vs COL VS IRL vs ARG 68kg both MLI and UZB are unseeded, one of them will be #15 and the other #16. that will be decided by blind draw KOR vs TBD VS BRA vs TPE JPN vs BIH VS ESP vs EGY ---- GBR vs TBD VS BEL vs TUR CHN vs NZL VS IRI vs DOM and it seems we will have a very interesting matchup at the beginning of women's 57kg competition. with an extra quota for the fakeugee Kimia Alizadeh, I assume #16 and #17 will have an extra bout against each other before entering the main draw. and guess who is #16 and who is #17 ? Kimia Alizadeh and Nahid Kiani

thanks for the explanation so this is something like that Smart Gilas project led by Rajko Toroman? preparing a bunch of amateur players this time for the 2023 World Cup? since our NT played Philippines like million times I'm familiar with your basketball system. I still can't understand why you make it very complicated with your NT. just invite the best available players before each tournament. train few weeks together and you will be fine. you don't have to "create" a new team for each tournament. usually you change 20/30% of the team each year. not changing the whole team

I understand that from a non-Iranian point of view it looks like a good group for Iran. but Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are sometimes very difficult for us. we had bad results against them before. even last time when we qualified quite comfortably still we didn't beat Syria (it was two draws against them). Iraq is always Iraq. there is a rivalry (and some kind of hatred) between these two teams. our matches are always ugly with lots of fights. Lebanon is a weak team but they also beat us in 2014 World Cup qualifier by a random free kick goal and parking the bus. and South Korea. I'm sure they hate to play Iran more than how we hate to play them in past 4 WCQ matches Iran beat them 1-0 3 times lol (and the other match ended up 0-0) but we don't have Queiroz anymore. to be honest I didn't want two teams, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. we avoided one of them at least.