IWF World Junior Championships:
Iran off the mark as Zarei bags double medals
Hamidreza Zarei opened Iran’s account at the IWF World Junior Weightlifting Championships in Ismailia, Egypt, by collecting a silver and a bronze medal on the fifth day of competition.
Competing in the men’s -94kg event, Zarei registered three successful lifts in the snatch category but was unlucky to miss out on the podium, finishing fourth with 162kg.
Georgian Goga Jajvani bagged the snatch gold with 167kg – one kilogram clear of Chilean silver medalist Mauricio Loaiza, with Armenia’s Valerik Movsisyan taking bronze on 164kg.
Zarei delivered a much-improved performance in the clean & jerk contest to secure silver with a 204kg lift, despite failing with his third and final attempt of 212kg.
Loaiza claimed the C&J gold with 207kg, while Jajvani settled for bronze with 200kg.
Zarei’s 366kg tally earned him the bronze total medal – the third world junior medal of the Iranian’s career, after the -96kg clean & jerk gold he won in Lima, Peru, last year.
Loaiza (373kg) and Jajvani (367kg) won the total gold and silver, respectively.
Mohammad-Amin Habibi was the other Iranian in the -94kg class on Thursday, finishing sixth in both snatch and C&J categories with 161kg and 187kg respectively, before placing fifth in the total standings.
Amir-Mohammad Rahmati and Mohammad-Amin Dadvand were the first Iranians on the platform in Ismailia, competing in the men’s -88kg division on Wednesday. Rahmati stood seventh in total with a 152-180-332 performance, while Dadvand crashed out after three failed attempts in clean & jerk.
Coached by former world and Olympic champion Sohrab Moradi, the Iranian eight-man squad had arrived in Ismailia only late on Monday after a visa delay threatened to derail their participation in the showpiece.