Asian Taekwondo Championships:
Iran suffers team setbacks in poomsae
Iranians suffered further setbacks in the poomsae competition on Day 2 of the Asian Taekwondo Championships in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, finishing empty-handed in the mixed pair events on Wednesday.
Given a bye in the first round, Yassin Zandi and Marjan Salahshouri crashed out in the mixed pair under-30 quarterfinals after scoring 8.62 points against the Filipino duo’s 8.70.
Zandi had fallen to Muhammad Riza of Indonesia in the round of 16 of the men’s individual event on the opening day, while the women’s competition was one to forget for two-time world silver medalist Salahshouri, who defeated Hong Kong’s Tsz Ki Liu in her opener but was undone by South Korea’s Jooyeong Lee.
Meanwhile, Yassin Akbari and Yasaman Limouchi teamed up to progress from the freestyle mixed pair preliminaries, but eventually settled for a fifth-place finish after an 8.20-point performance in the final showdown.
Akbari had also made it to the men’s individual final on Tuesday, finishing sixth, which proved enough for him to secure qualification for the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games in September.
Limouchi represented the country in the women’s freestyle event, finishing ninth in the preliminaries with 7.40 points to miss out on the final showdown.
The Asian Championships will continue with the opening day of the kyorugi contests at the M Bank Arena today.
Yassin Valizadeh will get the country’s men’s team title defense underway in the -54kg division, while reigning Olympic champion Arian Salimi will look to make up for a below-par World Championships campaign last year – where he suffered a round-of-16 exit – by defending his continental title in the +87kg class.
In the women’s event, Masoumeh Ranjbar will compete in the -46kg class, while Fatemeh Ahmadi will be part of the +73kg draw.