Asian Games in Incheon and World Cup competitions in Indonesia were the only official wushu events where Iran’s national squad succeeded to win colourful medals. The feat of standing only second to China in World Cup with only a gold medal less in Sanda module reflected Iran’s improvements in the module.
The success in 2010 of wushu national squad raised the expectations for Incheon 2014; however, a gold, two silvers, and a bronze medal could be considered a success. Incheon 2014 proved quite different than its version four years ago; a strong resolve in part of the hosting South Korea to harvest beautifully-coloured gold medals through obvious bias by the referees to the interest of the host posed serious barriers for Iran in the path to repeat the shining success of 2010. Similarly, the failure of Talou cannot be underestimated. Ehsan Peighambari, Farshad Arabi, Hamideh Barkhor, and Hanieh Rajabi failed to live to expectations, indicating that Iran would recourses to Chinese technical support in Talou, which indeed was an Achilles’s heel for Iran’s wushu delegation to the Games.
In Sanda, national squad has proved to score higher with domestic coaches; however, in Talou, it fails to succeed.
Iran’s wushu did accomplish a feat of excellence to win 6 golds along with a silver won by Maryam Hashemi, whose teammates outperformed her with winning golds; Soheila Mansourian, Shahrbanou Mansourian, Jafar Shirzad, Hamidreza Delavar, Hamidreza Qolipour, and Mostafa Khalatbari catapulted Iran to second place in the World Cup.
Another important event for wushu was the re-election of Alinejad despite criticism mounted by some rival candidates to the manner of elections and the Ministry of Sports handling of the event. Amid the majority won by Mehdi Alinejad in federation elections, the criticisms go still unaddressed; it is a public demand that the head of the federation work harder to push the wushu forward in his third four-year incumbency.
SH
MNA
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