2025 Asian Youth Games:
Iran’s ‘Ambassadors of Hope’ aiming for record haul in Manama
Iranian young guns will be seeking their most successful campaign yet at the 2025 Asian Youth Games in Manama, Bahrain.
The third edition of the multi-sport event will officially kick off with the opening ceremony on Wednesday, though the Iranians were already in action in handball, volleyball, kurash, and pencak silat on Sunday.
Under the motto ‘Ambassadors of Hope’, the Iranian delegation will feature 400 male and female athletes competing across 24 sporting events – including volleyball, handball, mixed martial arts, kabaddi, weightlifting, taekwondo, 3x3 basketball, athletics, futsal, muaythai, judo, cycling, pencak silat, and kurash.
The Iranians will also compete in table tennis, beach volleyball, freestyle and beach wrestling, esports, boxing, aquatics, triathlon, and golf on the men’s side, while badminton represents the women’s lineup in that discipline.
Iran has participated in the two previous editions of the Games with mixed results.
In the inaugural Games in Singapore in 2009, Iran competed in nine sports with 54 athletes and ranked 11th overall, earning one gold, three silvers, and two bronze medals, accounting for 2.2 percent of the total medals awarded.
The country’s medal-winning sports were athletics (one gold, double silvers, one bronze), 3x3 basketball (silver), and football (bronze). China and South Korea dominated the medal table that year, claiming nearly half of all gold medals combined.
At the second edition in Nanjing in 2013, Iran increased its participation to 79 athletes across 17 sports but finished 20th in the standings with six silver and two bronze medals, representing 2.04 percent of the overall medal share.
Medals came in athletics (three silvers, one bronze), football (silver), shooting (silver), taekwondo (silver), and judo (bronze). Once again, China and South Korea topped the charts, taking home a combined 58 percent of all gold medals.
Now, as the 2025 Bahrain Asian Youth Games is around the corner, Iran enters the competition determined to build on past experience and improve its continental standing. With representation in more sports than ever before, the ‘Ambassadors of Hope’ aim to deliver their best performance yet and, potentially, set new national records in the medal count.