Yazdani back to training in a bid for Olympic glory
Iran’s Hassan Yazdani made his long-awaited return to the wrestling mat this week in a bid to win a third successive Olympic medal in the upcoming Paris Games.
Yazdani had been ruled out of action for more than six months after a surgery on his injured shoulder, with his latest appearance coming in last October’s Asian Games, where he cruised to the freestyle 86kg gold.
Yazdani was to join the national team training camp in Tehran this week but decided to continue his recovery in his home town of Juybar in northern Iran and a video on his Instagram account on Thursday showed him in training with sparring partner Mahdi Yegane’ Ja’fari.
A winner of a national-high nine world and Olympic medals, Yazdani secured the Olympic 86kg quota for the country through last year’s World Championships in Belgrade, where he fell to a fifth defeat in six meetings with familiar foe David Taylor in the final showpiece.
However, Yazdani is yet to be guaranteed a place in the Iranian Olympic squad as there have been doubts over his fitness levels with three months to go until the opening ceremony of the Games in the French capital.
Alireza Dabir, the chairman of the Iranian Wrestling Federation, was first to question the future of Yazdani’s career weeks after his surgery.
“No wrestler in Iran has ever fully recovered from a shoulder injury over the past 20 years,” said Dabir, whose illustrious career came to a premature end with the same problem when he was 25.
Standing between Yazdani and a place in Paris will likely be fellow-Iranian Kamran Qassempour, who has been dealing with his own injury setbacks over the past 12 months.
Two-time world 92kg champion Qassempour missed out on the title defense last year before moving up the 97kg Olympic class for the start of the new year, though his failure in January’s Zagreb Open left young prodigy Amir-Ali Azarpira as the frontrunner to represent the country in the weight division.
Iran head coach Mohsen Kaveh said last week that Yazdani would be sent to a tournament in Hungary or Armenia before the Olympics to have his fitness assessed, while the Iranian 86kg slot could be on the line in a highly-anticipated head-to-head featuring him and Qassempour.
Having lost the final to Taylor in the Tokyo Olympics, Yazdani will be eager to add the Paris gold to his Rio 2016 triumph after the 34-year-old American was stunned by Aaron Brooks in the U.S. Olympic trials last Saturday and will play no part in Paris showdown in July.