Weightlifting World Championships:
Iranians off the mark with triple medals
Iranian weightlifters Alireza Moeini and Ali Alipour bagged first medals for the country at the IWF World Championships in Manama, Bahrain, collecting a silver and double bronzes in the men’s 96kg weight class.
Moeini lifted 176kg, before failing with the 179kg attempt twice, but the first effort was enough for the Iranian to win the snatch silver, finishing behind Georgian Revaz Davitadze, who stood on the top podium with 177kg.
China’s Qian Feixiang took the bronze of the discipline with 175kg.
A tight clean & jerk contest later in the day saw the top three finish with a best lift of 214kg, only to be separated by the different body weights.
Alipour, 20, began with a 205kg lift and then made the biggest jump of the session with a successful effort of 214kg, though he still had to settle for the bronze medal behind South Korean gold medalist Won Jong-beom and Nurgissa Adiletuly of Kazakhstan.
An overall tally of 387kg helped Alipour grab a second bronze medal of the afternoon, with Adiletuly (388kg) and Davitadze (387kg) taking the total gold and silver.
Moeini, meanwhile, finished 10th in the C&J standings with 202kg and stood seventh in the total table with 378kg.
Thursday’s medals for Iran came after Reza Baghi had stood 14th in the men’s 81kg contests with a 149kg-184kg-333kg record in Group B session, while North Korean dominated the weight class with a clean sweep of three golds.
For Mirmostafa Javadi – a winner of five world medals, including last year’s double golds in Riyadh – the men’s 89kg competition was one to forget after he managed to register a single successful lift (162kg in snatch) and missed out on spot in the table.
Elaheh Razzaqi, the only Iranian in the women’s competitions, recorded 95kg-125kg-220kg to finish 10th in the 76kg weight division.