Yazdani and Qassempour to decide 86kg wrestling berth in Paris
With just over 100 days until the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, the biggest question facing the coaching staff of the Iranian wrestling team is who will be the country’s freestyle 86kg contestant in Paris.
Hadi Vafaeipour was hoping to build on double gold medals at the National Championships and the Yasar Dogu & Vehbi Emre tournament in Turkey to get a shot at the Olympic berth against Hassan Yazdani, but his failure to bag the gold in the Asian Championships last week left him out of contention for the showpiece in Paris.
A fully fit Yazdani, a winner of a national-high nine world and Olympic medals, is all but guaranteed a spot in the squad as he will be looking to beat familiar American foe David Taylor for only the second time in six meetings, should the two dominant forces of the weight class go head-to-head in the Games.
However, with the event fast approaching, questions have been raised about his fitness as the Iranian sensation has just recently returned to light training after being sidelined for six months due to a surgery on his injured shoulder right after a gold-winning campaign at the Asian Games last October.
“No wrestler in Iran has fully recovered from a shoulder injury over the past 20 years. That’s what happened to me as my career came to an end when I was 25. Hassan showed great passion and resilience to participate at the World Championships [last September] and win a medal there but he just couldn’t continue like this. I hope he will be the first wrestler to overcome the problem,” Alireza Dabir, the chairman of the Iranian Wrestling Federation, said days after his surgery, with veteran Iranian Mansour Barzegar, the national team head coach in the 90s, sharing his opinion, saying: “From what I’ve seen over the years, no wrestler has ever been able to wrestle again after a shoulder injury.”
Asked about Yazdani’s situation days ago, Iran head coach Mohsen Kaveh said: “Hassan will be back in the national team training camp in May and then the technical staff and the federation will decide to send him to a tournament in Armenia or Hungary to have his fitness assessed for the Olympics.”
Meanwhile, Kamran Qassempour, a back-to-back world 92kg champion in 2021 and 2022, has been regarded as a contender for the 86kg spot in recent weeks, though he has had his own injury blows over the past 12 months, which ruled him out of the title defense in the world event as well as the following Asian Games.
Qassempour moved up to the 97kg Olympic class for the start of the new year but a comprehensive defeat against Kyle Synder at the Zagreb Open Ranking Series event in January, followed by Amir-Ali Azarpira’s sensational victory over the American great in the final, saw the Iranian prodigy emerge as the frontrunner in the upcoming Asian Olympic qualification tournament in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Many wrestling pundits in the country have argued against Qassempour moving to the 86kg class, believing he will barely have a chance of success after a massive weight loss in such a short space of time.
“I’m sure the final decision will be in the best interest of the national team,” Dabir said last week, adding: “It will all depend on how Yazdani will return from the shoulder injury.”