Road to Olympics 2020 Tokyo

[_Navid_]

Good group and schedule. Let's hope our boys can keep us their current good form. Ghafour and Mousavi are on fire in Italian and Plish league right now.
I also hope Mahmoudi joins back as our back up spiker. I don't trust Yali yet.

[Irannn]

Very important news for Mirhashem Hosseini only few days left before the final ranking tournament.
one of his main rivals, the Olympic Champion Ahmad AbuGhaush from Jordan had a surgery and will miss the GP, which means even by just participating Mirhashem will surpass him in the ranking. first round losers will receive 8pts here and that will be enough for Hosseini, I highly doubt AbuGhaush can just register and then withdraw because they have strict rules about withdrawals for this specific tournament.

this improves Hosseini's chance massively, in this case he has a very good chance to put himself in top 8 even if loses in Moscow. of course I still hope he does the job done himself by winning a gold or silver but now he isn't under huge pressure anymore. still it's not safe because there are 4 more athletes lower than him still capable of surpassing him. but now they have to win gold or silver to take Hosseini's place.

I know this isn't good to be happy about someone else's injury. but I think Mirhashem deserved a bit of luck after all. that will also change the whole draw, if they remove AbuGhaush from the ranking. Hosseini will face Ketbi (Belgium) in the first round and then Achab (Belgium) or McNeish (GBR) in the QF which is a bit easier.

these are all suggestions, I can be 100% sure only when I receive the draw. maybe the Jordanian guy finds a way to just register (and receive those 8 pts)

[_Navid_]

Good news. Let's hope they won't just let him register and get the points, but somehow they usually give them a chance if they are non-Iranian!!

[Irannn]

We had the Asian Archery Championships today in Thailand as the continental qualifier in this sport. Iran won a quota in men's individual by Milad Vaziri.

we had two archers in men's semifinal, both lost it but Vaziri beat Amin Pirali in bronze medal match to win the quota for Iran, Vaziri is a 2012 Olympian. but still the quota belongs to the country and not the athlete, and Iran can replace him but that's unlikely.

it was disappointing we failed to qualify in women's event, therefore we also can't participate in mixed team event as well, we even had the 2nd seed but she lost to a girl from Bhutan ! Zahra Nemati was supposed to be our best chance but she was poor in the qualification and since she was seed 16 she had to face the top seed and eventual winner from India in 1/8 final where she lost very narrowly.

there is still once more chance left for everybody. "Final Qualification tournament" in Germany in June 2020. in Germany we can also try our chance to qualify a full team in both genders which is really hard, in the women's side we can also try for an individual quota. it will be hard but not impossible.

[Irannn]

Good news. Let's hope they won't just let him register and get the points, but somehow they usually give them a chance if they are non-Iranian!!

Yeah that's why I said I will be sure only when I receive the draw. but nowadays you have to participate in weight-in to officially register in a competition, and this guy can't even walk properly after the surgery!

just a reminder it was the ranking by my calculations, hopefully I didn't miscalculate anything

1. South Korea 487.10
2. Great Britain 393.37
3. China 364.89
4. Spain 313.67
5. Belgium 311.50
----------------
6. Jordan 301.50
---------------
7. Iran 296.87
8. Croatia 282.08
9. Brazil 269.99
10. Russia 260.54
11. Chinese Taipei 260.04

and this is how they award points for this event
Gold medal = 80
Silver medal = 48
Bronze medal = 28.8
4th place = 17.28
5th place (losing in QF) = 12.10
9th place (losing in R1) = 8.47

Officially only top 5 directly qualify but I'm 95% sure the 6th guy will qualify too (it will depend on Grand Slam tournament, later in December)

here are all scenarios and what the other guys need minimum to catch Hosseini
1st Round exit ==> CRO bronze, BRA/RUS/TPE silver
QF exit ==> CRO bronze, BRA silver, RUS/TPE gold
4th place ==> CRO/BRA silver, RUS/TPE gold
3rd place ==> CRO silver, BRA/RUS/TPE gold
2nd place ==> CRO/BRA gold , impossible for the rest
* if Hosseini wins the silver he will catch at least one of those 2 guys (ESP and BEL) above him and will qualify for sure.

And the good news is, if nobody else withdraws (and no more change in the draw) those CRO and BRA guys will face each other in the 1st round and the winner will face Lee Dae-Hoon of Korea in the QF. I really don't think any of them can go further. I have to say the Brazilian guy is quite dangerous though.
TPE and RUS also will be paired against each other and only one of them survives the first round, who will get World Champion Sinden (GBR) in the 2nd round.

considering everything I think Hosseini's chance is something like 80%. but of course you can forget everything I wrote here in this post if you see AbuGhaush in the draw.

ps: Hosseini's competition will be on 6 December.

[Ab-Gosht]

https://www.telewebion.com/episode/2159283

[Irannn]

Tomorrow is the day for Mirhashem Hosseini, they published the draw, there is no Ahmad AbuGhaush in the draw which is good but it seems something else happened looks like before his surgery he participated in an event in Palestine and collected few more points , 3.60 which makes his tally 305.10

still by my calculation even if Mirhashem losses in the first round, he will receive 8.47 and adding that to his 296.87 which means he will have at least 305.34 !!!! as you can see it's just 0.24pts more than the Jordanian guy ! honestly I'm not sure if I can trust my calculation when it comes to this narrow margin ! but I'm confident he will win at least one match to make sure he will surpass this guy at least.

beside that it seems even mathematically it's impossible for anybody outside of these 3 guys (Zhao, Sinden and Lee) to win the Grand Slam tournament. and since these 3 guys are top 3 in the World Ranking as well. the Grand Slam quota goes to the 6th guy in the WR, which means Mirhashem only needs a 6th place finish, so I can confirm whatever I calculated in my previous post is correct.

The first day of the competition is the preliminaries for all weight classes until the semifinals. but gold and bronze medal matches will be held the next day. for Sajjad Mardani things are less complicated he needs to be in the final at the very least ! I think only gold will be 100% enough for him. probably very slim chance with the silver. if Mardani makes it to the final tomorrow I will calculate in details if that's enough for him or he still needs the gold. but that's a big if.

[Irannn]

Update about the first day of Taekwondo Final GP

Armin Hadipour made it to the semifinal but lost to Korea. his Olympic spot was already safe

but it was quite a day for Mirhashem Hosseini, he made it to the semifinal against his archrival Lee Dae-hoon. Mirhashem was leading most of the match but lost focus for something like 10 seconds and lost his lead, he came back to the match in last 10-20 seconds and while the score was tied at 20. Lee tried a head kick in the very last second and won the match. it was heartbreaking for Hosseini but by my calculation he did enough to qualify for the Olympics. he is currently 6th, he will climb up to 5th if he wins the bronze tomorrow but in this specific weight even 6th place is enough. but our TKD federation is not going to announce that until they are 100% sure and apparently they are not.

but the surprise of the day belongs to Sajjad Mardani, he made it to the final against the odds, he beat 2019 World Silver medalist, 2019 World Champion and 2016 Olympic Champion on his way to the final. unfortunately it's not done yet and still he needs to win the gold tomorrow to qualify. his final will be against South Korea. we lost twice to Korea today, hopefully tomorrow will be different.

----------------
so in summary , based on my count, Armin Hadipour (58kg) and Mirhashem Hosseini (68kg) are already qualified for the Olympics, Sajjad Mardani (+80kg) has to win the gold tomorrow to join them. but keep in mind, this is not official. nobody is qualified yet officially.

[_Navid_]

Some amazing matches from the boys today. Really impressed with Mardani. He showed he can beat anyone if he tries and won't be lazy.

Another heartbreaking loss against Lee for Hashem. He should have just waited for the golden round and not exposed his head like that in the final minute. But it seams he completed the impossible journey and got his quota!!

[Irannn]

Today was terrible for our guys, all of them lost their medal matches, and all 3 of them conceded big points on turning kicks, Sajjad Mardani missed the quota by just 10pts, only if he could some cheap points in minor tournaments before.

but now it's confirmed that Mirhashem Hosseini is qualified too. so as of now we have 2 quotas in Taekwondo, and 1 more is still possible in Grand Slam tournament in 2 weeks. but that will be hard, because mardani has to rank higher than the same Korean athlete in Grand Slam !

[DR Strangemoosh]

Russia banned from sports for four years...??

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

[Irannn]

Russia banned from sports for four years...??

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

the name of Russia is banned but I think most of their athletes will be allowed to participate under a different name. as they did at the 2018 Winter Olympics. but it seems they have to prove not guilty to WADA to get cleared to compete. we will see if it changes anything for us. for example our volleyball team lost to Russia during the Olympic qualifiers, but I highly doubt they ban Russia in team sports.
but it's probably too early to judge, Russia will go to CAS, but if CAS confirms the ban, then international federations have to decide about how to deal with Russia. some of them will be harsh on Russia and some of them (like Wrestling) won't

[tmfan]

we all knew Russia was doping judging from the 2018 world cup.

[Irannn]

Mardani lost in the first round of Grand Slam tournament. no Olympic for him.

that means we will have only 2 male athletes in Tokyo in Taekwondo. which is a very bad news. which means we failed because even if we had no quotas, we still could win 2 in Asian Qualifiers, so all those traveling, collecting ranking points etc were for nothing.

we can't send anybody else to the Asian Qualifier in men's events because we already have 2 quotas, but we will send 2 female fighters.

[Nokhodi]

I heard a horrible rumor that Hassan Yazdani is injured and may miss the Olympics. Is it true or usual Iranian fake news?