U20 Wrestling World Championships:
Reality check as Iran falters in freestyle
Iranian wrestling was handed a harsh reality check at the U20 World Championships in Bratislava, Slovakia, after a run of poor results across different weight classes saw the country miss out on a top-three finish in the freestyle team standings for the first time in a decade.
Abolfazl Rahmani settled for silver in the 92kg division on Saturday – a day after Ahoura Khateri had won bronze in the 61kg class – while Sina Khalili (70kg) and Abolfazl Mohammadnejad (125kg) reached the final in their respective events. However, it proved far from enough for Iran – three-time champion in the past five editions – to even match last year’s third-place finish, after six other members of the squad finished their campaigns empty-handed.
A silver medalist at June’s U20 Asian Championships, Mohammad-Mahdi Mamivand saw his 74kg campaign come to an end after just one bout following an 8-2 defeat against Germany’s Manuel Wagin, while Tohid Nouri crashed out of the 97kg event after suffering an 11-0 defeat against Georgia’s Konstantine Petriashvili in the second round.
In 65kg, Ali-Asghar Tat fell to a 5-3 defeat against Russia’s Zalimkhan Umarov in the quarterfinals, with Asian U20 champion Sobhan Esmi losing 6-3 to Ukraine’s Bohdan Oleksiienko in the 79kg repechage.
Abolfazl Shamsipour also failed to seize his repechage opportunity in the 86kg class, losing 4-0 to Kazakhstan’s Askhab Khajiev, while Arman Elahi was knocked out of the 57kg event following a 12-6 setback against Kyrgyzstan’s Nurtilek Zamirbekov in his first bout.
Rahmani, meanwhile, enjoyed an emphatic run by securing three successive superiority wins before being undone by a 5-2 defeat against Georgia’s Sandro Kurashvili in the 92kg final.
Kurashvili used a last-ditch body throw to beat Rahmani. The Iranian led 2-0 with six seconds remaining when he glanced at the clock, and Kurashvili capitalized on the lapse in concentration, throwing him for four points with less than a second left on the clock. Iran, despite knowing there was still time for the throw, desperately challenged the decision but lost.
The disappointing results left Iran languishing in sixth place in the team table with 51 points by the end of the penultimate day of action in the Slovak capital, meaning even two more golds through Khalili and Mohammadnejad on the final day would not see the country climb above fourth place.
The United States all but secured a third successive team title after having seven wrestlers in the final, with Russia – eligible for team points for the first time since 2022 – followed by Japan and Kazakhstan in the next spots.
The dreadful freestyle campaign came after Iran also had a Greco-Roman tournament to forget, at least by its own standards, earlier in Bratislava, missing out on a fifth successive team crown.
Armin Shamsipour was the only Iranian gold medalist across 10 divisions, triumphing in the 55kg class, while Amirali Heidari (60kg), Ali Gharibi (63kg), Amirmahdi Saiedi-Nava (77kg), and Ali Nematzadeh (87kg) added four bronzes to the medal haul, as Iran settled for the runner-up spot with 109 points – 33 behind Russia, which collected three golds, two silvers, and one bronze.