On the second day of the Asian Games of Jakarta, Iranian athletes won three medals Monday. Iran’s football team advanced to the next round and both men and women kabaddi teams celebrated their second victories.
Iran, which dominated the first day of freestyle wrestling games with two gold medals of Hassan Yazdani in 86kg and Alireza Karimi in 97kg, as well as bronze for Reza Atri in the 57kg category, showed power on the second day when 125kg wrestler, Parviz Hadi beat India’s Sumit Sumit 10-0 in the first match.
With the same result, Hadi defeated the Kazakh Boltin Oleg in the quarterfinals to gain a semifinal ticket. Hadi then hammered Uzbek Davit Modzmanashvili 11-8 and got a chance to battle for gold against Zhiwei Deng of China which he did not miss and hammered the Chinese 7-0 to win the third gold for Iran freestyle wrestling team.
For Iran, taekwondoka Farzan Ashoorzadeh took the first medal of the day by winning bronze in the -53kg class.
Taekwondo team of Iran participated on the second day in both men and women games but it was only Farzan Ashoorzadeh who succeeded. The women pair, Elaheh Sheidaei and Melika Mir-Hosseini, both lost their chances to win a medal but Ashoorzadeh from the men’s team advanced to the semis after hammering Vietnamese Vo Quoc Hung 13-6 in the quarterfinals.
Ashoorzadeh’s winning streak was broken when he lost 15-13 to Pulatov Niyaz of Uzbekistan and took bronze as the first medal for Iranian taekwondo as well as the first medal of the second day.
Not yet medal winners, Iranian rowers stormed into the tournament with victories in the first rounds to secure their place in further levels.
Iranian rower in the lightweight single scull category advanced to the final after finishing second in heat 1 of the second round. Also, Iran’s four-man lightweight scull team finished first in the second heat of the qualification round booking a direct ticket for the finals and the men double scull team fights for bronze in the repechages.
National women’s rowing team paddled toward glory as Parisa Ahmadi in individual single scull and pair Nazanin Rahmani and Maryam Omid-Parsa, in women’s lightweight double scull, secured their final berths. In the individual women lightweight single scull Nazanin Mollaei cemented her place in the finals.
Fencing
Suffering from minor losses in round of 16, sabre fencers Mojtaba Abedini defeated Chinese Xu Yingming 15-6 and advanced to the quarterfinals where he faced South Korean world champion, Gu Bongil. Suffering a narrow 15-12 loss Abedini failed to advance to semis.
The other fencer from Iran Ali Pakdaman continued his winning streak up to quarterfinals without a single loss in the first round. Pakdaman met Vu Thanh An of Vietnam in the quarterfinals and beat his rival 15-11 to go up to the semifinal against Oh Sanguk from powerhouse South Korea. In a hard-fought match, the Korean edged Pakdaman 15-14 leaving the Iranian with the bronze medal. Pakdaman’s medal is the first fencing trophy for the country at the Asian Games since 1974 games hosted by Tehran.
The final game was between Oh and Gu Bongil both from South Korea. The results were not available when the paper went to print.
Ballgames
Iranian ballgame teams, football, sepaktakraw, and handball all finished with losses while two beach volleyball teams registered gains.
National U23 football team representing the nation in the Asian and Olympics Games met Myanmar in their group stage match and lost 2-0. Despite the result, Iran secured a place in the next round of the games as the table topper of Group F. In other games of the group, North Korea thrashed Saudi Arabia 3-0 that helped Iran stay on top. Iran will face South Korea in the round of 16.
In yet another unlucky ballgame for Iran, National Sepaktakraw men’s team suffered a 2-1 loss to the powerhouses India in their debutant preliminary Group B matches.
The other loss at the ball-games visited Iran handball team which lost the main round matches of Group 2 to Bahrain 29-23 after a loss to Asian giant Qatar in their group stage games.
But the arsenal of the beach volleyball players was loaded as both teams brought down their rivals in the opening games. Bahman Raoufi and Abdolhamed Mirzaei from Iran A team overpowered East Timor team 2-0 and with the same result Iran B team pair of Arash Vakili and Bahman Salemi beat Thailand.
Women Kabaddi team of Iran achieved their second victory after beating Bangladesh 47-19 and Iran men’s team downed Pakistan 36-20 as their second victory.
Also Iran’s only partaker in equitation field, Soheila Lita Sohi finished 12th in the individual dressage category. The downhill cycler, Hossein Zanjanian finished fifth and a rider from the host country won gold.
Iranian flag bearer of the women shooting team, Elaheh Ahmadi finished seventh in the finals of 10m rifle games and her teammate Armina Sadeghian settled in fifth place of the same category.
From the men’s shooting team Amir-Mohammad Nekonam in 10m rifle category emerged medal-less and finished seventh. Yet again from the men’s team, Amir-Siavash Zolfagharian failed to advance to the finals.
Yang Haoran and Zhao Ruzhu both from China won the gold in the men and women 10m rifle categories. The Chinese also won gold in the men and women 10m pistol divisions. Ji Xiaojing in men’s and Wu Jiayu in women’s category clinched gold.
On the medal count table, Iran is sixth with three wrestling gold, two silvers, and three bronze medals.
China raised their gold medal count to 15 with 10 silver and 9 bronze to hold the top spot with a total of 34 medals at 7 pm Iran Standard Time on Monday.
China’s Sun Yang claimed victory in the men’s 800m freestyle Asian Games as his second gold in the men’s 200m freestyle.
Japan is trailing China with eight gold, 11 silver and nine bronze medals. South Korea is in third place with 4 gold medals, eight silver and nine bronze.
