Iranian men crowned at Asian Weightlifting Championships
A total of eight medals — including double golds — saw Iran’s men’s team claim the top spot at the Asian Weightlifting Championships in Jinju, South Korea.
Iran stood atop the table with 635 points, four points clear of second-placed Uzbekistan, with China in the third spot.
On Saturday, Ayat Sharifi and Alireza Yousefi walked away with a couple of silver medals in the +109kg contest to help Iran win the first men’s title since 2017.
Sharifi tallied 197kg for the snatch silver, while Yousefi stood on the second podium of the clean & jerk event with a best lift of 246kg.
Armenian-born Bahraini weightlifter Gor Minasyan, a silver medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics, dominated the super-heavyweight contests with a clean sweep of three golds — breaking the Asian snatch and total records in doing so.
The pinnacle of Iran’s campaign came in the 81kg weight class, where Hossein Soltani bagged the C&J and total golds as well as the snatch silver.
Meanwhile, Mir-Mostafa Javadi left the tournament with two bronzes (C&J and total) in the 89kg competitions.
In the women’s event, Fatemeh Keshavarz grabbed the C&J and total bronzes of the 64kg class to become only the second Iranian female weightlifter to win a medal in the Asian Championships — following Elham Hosseini, who collected three golds last year in Manama, Bahrain.