Iran juniors’ male team topped the medal table at the 2018 Hammamet Juniors Taekwondo Championships in Hammamet, Tunisia, April 9-14, with a total of nine medals.
Iran claimed the top spot in the overall men’s medal table with seven gold and two bronze medals while South Korea was second with one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. Turkey was third with one gold and two silver medals, according to the final results posted on Worldtaekwondo.org.
“In the 24-year history of the games even South Korea could not achieve such a result,” Vahid Abdollahi, head of Iran men’s team said. He was chosen as the best coach of the championships in the male’s division.
He said although the time for training sessions was short, the team pushed hard to be fully prepared and proved their mettle in a history-making victory.
Mohammad Ali Khosravi of Iran in the junior male -78kg category took gold on the final day of the tournament.
Nima Mehr-Ali clinched the other medal for Iran on the final day by winning the bronze medal in +78kg category.
Six other male juniors claimed gold; Hossein Lotfi was the first to win gold for Iran on the first day of the games, April 9. In -45kg Lotfi defeated his Uzbek rival Amirbek Turaev to clinch gold.
In the 55kg class, Amir-Sina Bakhtiyari won another gold after beating his Argentine opponent Jose Luis Acuna in the final clash on the second day.
Amir Valipour also dominated the match against the Azeri Khanoghlan Karimov in the final contest of the men’s -51kg class to clinch the country’s third gold.
On the third day, Hamed Asghari bagged gold in the -59kg category while the other Iranian junior, Erfan Moradi won bronze in the -63kg category.
The tree of the medals bore fruit on the fourth day when Mohammad-Mahdi Emadi took gold in the -68kg division after defeating his rival from the US.
The gold winning streak continued for the delegation on the same day when Ali Eshkevarian took a gold medal in the -73 division by hammering a rival from Poland.
Over the course of the championships, nearly 1,000 young athletes from 118 countries took part, demonstrating the universality of taekwondo. A total of 27 countries won medals demonstrating the sport’s extensive reach and popularity.
