World Karate Federation (WKF) will organize the 2018 Karate1 in the form of three Premier League stages to be held in Paris, Rotterdam and Rabat as well as three Series A stages to convene in Salzburg, Santiago and Shanghai.
The first part of 2018 Karate1 Premier League will therefore kick off on January 27 in Stadium Pierre de Coubertin in the French capital city of Paris and will run through January 29.
So far, presence of 753 karate practitioners from 80 world countries has been confirmed by the international body governing the sport.
Italy enjoys the lion’s share for deploying 55 athletes followed by host France who will have 48 representatives at the sportive extravaganza. Iran and Turkey will each deploy 35 karateka to jointly rank third in the number of participating athletes. Spain, meanwhile, will have 31 medal hopefuls at the 22nd edition of the Open Karate Premier League of Paris which will be held from January 26 to January 28, 2018.
Female Iranian athletes to fight for medals in Karate1 Premier League - Paris 2018 include Nasrin Dousti, Sarah Bahmanyar, Zohreh Barzegar, Fatemeh Chalaki, Taravat Khaksar, Rozita Alipour, Negin Bagheri, Mahtab Esmaeili, Mobina Kaviani, Hamideh Abbasalai as well as Mohadeseh Aghaei.
Iran’s hopes in the men’s division are pinned on Abolfazl Shahjerdi, Amirbahador Tadayon, Majid Hassannia, Amir Mahdizadeh, Saeid Ahmadi, Saeid Alipour, Hanun Derafshipour, Amir Mirzaei, Bahman Asgari, Aliasghar Asiabari, Ebrahim Hassanbeigi, Keivan Baban, Ali Fadakar, Mahdi Ghararizadeh, Ehsan Heidari, Mehdi Khodabakhsh, Zabihollah Pourshib, Saleh Abazari, Hadi Arab, Mahdi Ashouri, Sajad Ganjzadeh and Saman Heidari.
The Karate1-Premier League- is the most important league event in the world of Karate. It comprises of a number of the most prominent Karate competitions and endeavors to bring together the best Karate athletes in the world in an open championships of unprecedented scale and quality.
Initiated in 2011 with two tournaments held in Paris and Istanbul, the Karate1-Premier League- has made exponential progress in terms of magnitude and status of the tournaments as well as the number of participants and countries represented.
At the end of the season, the champions of each category are presented with the “Grand Winners” award. In order to be eligible to receive the “Grand Winners” award, competitors have to participate in at least 4 events in 2 continents of the season.
Competitors can earn ranking points in every Karate1 event according to the official WKF Ranking Criteria, point 3.2 of the WKF World Ranking Rules.
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