Iran’s team at the Asian Games of Jakarta bagged five colorful medals on Sunday, the first day of the games.
Iran had one athlete in the finals of both men’s and women’s individual Poomsae: Koorosh Bakhtiari and Marjan Salahshoori who both took silver after losing the final matches.
Kang Minsung of South Korea edged Bakhtiari and won gold for the men’s individual Poomsae while Salahshoori lost the final to Rosmaniar Defia from the host country. Bakhtiari and Salahshoori won Iran the first two medals.
In freestyle wrestling, gold winner in the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2017 World Championships Hassan Yazdani, 86kg, won 10-0 in his first match against Indonesian Fahriansyah in less than one minute.
Yazdani also beat India’s Kumar Pawan 11-0. In his semi Yazdani beat Mongolia’s Ordogol Uitumen 12-2 to be the first finalist in the wrestling sport for Iran against Abounader Domenic Michael from Lebanon. By 7 pm Iran standard time (when the paper went to print), the final match had not started.
In the 97kg, Alireza Karimi hammered Japanese Yamaguchi Takeshi in the first game after the first round rest and secured a place in semifinals against Uzbek Ibragimov Magomed. He beat the Uzbek 4-2 to step into the final showdown against Musaev Magomed from Kyrgyzstan as the second Iranian in the finals of the sport.
Reza Atri in 57kg defeated a Nepali rival in his first match after resting in the first round and advanced to the quarterfinals where he beat India’s Tomar Sandeep 15-9 to secure a semifinal berth. In the semis he failed to qualify after losing to Mongolian Erdenebat Bakhbayar 8-2 and went for the bronze after beating Kim Sunggwon of South Korea 9-4.
Mostafa Hosseinkhani in 74kg started strong for Iran while Mehran Nasiri, 65kg, who made his debut for the nation, was edged by a Chinese rival 8-7 in a hard-fought match.
Hosseinkhani first hammered Mohammad Ali Amzad of Bangladesh 10-0 and in his second thrashed Turkmen Dovletmyrat Orazgylyjov 12-2 but lost the quarterfinal 4-2 to Abdurakhmonov Bekzod from Uzbekistan.
Iran kabaddi teams made strong starts while both men and women’s teams began with victory against their rivals.
Men’s team from Iran overpowered Japan 55-19 in its first match and the women beat South Korea 46-20. The women will face Bangladesh on Monday while the men’s team will line up against Pakistan.
