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Four Iranians to battle for two Olympic GR slots in Budapest
Iran became the first country to secure a full six-man squad for the Games after Amin Kavianinejad and Alireza Mohamadi reached the last four of the 77kg and 87kg weight classes respectively at the Asian qualification tournament in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, earlier in the week.
The two are all but guaranteed a spot in Paris – joining reigning world superheavyweight champion Amin Mirzazadeh and Mohammad-Hadi Saravi – a winner of four successive major medals in the 97kg contests, including the 2021 world gold, since the Tokyo Olympics.
Mohammadreza Geraei will be looking to bag a second Olympic 67kg gold in a row in Paris but first he will have to see off domestic competition from young prodigy Saeid Esmaeili.
Former world junior and cadet champion Esmaeili stole the show at the Asian Championships last week, rounding off an emphatic run with a victory over Kyrgyzstan’s Razzak Beishekeev in the final showpiece.
Geraei claimed the Olympic and world golds in the space of two months in 2021, but failed to continue his domination over the next two years, as he fell to Mate Nemeš in the 2022 world final before laboring to a joint-bronze alongside the Serbian in last September’s UWW Worlds – suffering a technical fall against eventual silver medalist Hasrat Jafarov of Azerbaijan in the quarterfinals.
Meanwhile, Mahdi Mohsennejad and Amir-Reza Dehbozorgi will bid for the Iranian 60kg spot when event gets underway in the Hungarian capital.
Mohsennejad, an ex-world under-23 silver winner, failed to finish on the podium in last year’s World Championships but his win against Armenian Gevorg Gharibyan in the fifth-place bout was enough to seal the Olympic quota for the country.
Two-time world age-group champion Dehbozorgi was part of the Iranian team in the recently-finished Asian Championships and bounced back from a technical fall against Kyrgyz sensation Zholaman Sharshenbekov, who edged out Mohsennejad in the world event, to leave Bishkek with a consolation bronze.