The freestyle events at the Junior World Championships took place on September 03-04 in the French city of Mâcon where Iran’s outfit ranked fourth overall with two gold, one silver as well as one bronze medal.
Peiman Biabani (60kg) and Hossein Shahbazi (96kg) won gold medals on the first day of freestyle competitions while Ahmad Bazri bagged a silver medal at the 74-kilogram weight category.
However, Iranian wrestlers offered a less satisfactory performance on the second day only winning one bronze medal. Saman Shojaei (66kg) and Arashk Mohebi (84kg) conceded defeats against rivals in the qualification round while Erfan Aeini was eliminated after he refused to compete against the Zionist freestyler.
Iran’s only bronze medal was achieved by heavy-weight athlete Amirreza Amiri who defeated Frédérick Choquette of Canada by technical fall 12-2 in the first round. He later lost to Russia’s Kazbek Kubulov 6-8 and was sent to the losers’ group. Given the Russian rivals’s advancement to the finals, Amiri took advantage of a second chance and overcame Abhijeet Chandrakant Katake of India 4-0 in the repechage round. The Iranian wrestler had to quell the Polish Kamil Tomasz Kosciolek 7-2 in order to stand on the third podium.
Accordingly, Iran’s national junior freestyle team ended in the fourth position with a total of 37 points while Russia (66 points), Azerbaijan (49 points) and Turkey (43 points) ranked first to third, respectively.
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