Asian U20 Athletics Championships:
Iranians finish with two medals
Iranian nine-athlete squad finished its Asian U20 Athletics Championships campaign in Dubai with a couple of medals, including a historic gold in the women’s event.
On Saturday, Mahdi Haft-Cheshmeh registered a best throw of 66.64m to settle for the silver in the men’s hammer throw contest – a second successive runner-up finish for the Iranian in the event following last year’s 63.96m tally in Yecheon, South Korea.
Ali Sarvari was the other Iranian boy in the discipline but missed out on the podium, finishing fourth.
The pinnacle of the four-day tournament for the country came on Friday when Nazanin Fatemeh Eidian made history by becoming the first Iranian girl to grab an Asian junior gold in the sport.
A silver medalist last year, the sprinter clocked a national record of 58.86 seconds in the 400m hurdles final.
This was a third major continental medal for the Iranian girl in 2024 after she walked away with the 400m silver, while being a part of the country’s silver-winning quadruple in the 4×400m relay contest, in February’s Asian Indoor Athletics Championships in Tehran.
Melika Norouzi (women’s hammer throw), Mana Hosseini (women’s javelin throw), Sajjad Aqaei (men’s 400m), Elnaz Mousaei (women’s heptathlon), Mohammad-Hesam Mozaffari (men’s 800m), and Arshia Mosaddeqi (men’s pole vault) were the other members of the Iranian squad but were unlucky to leave Dubai empty-handed despite some decent performances across their respective discipline.