The freestyle events at the Junior World Championship kicked off on Saturday in the French city of Mâcon where Iran’s Peiman Biabani (60kg) and Hossein Shahbazi (96kg) won the titles while Ahmad Bazri only stood on the second podium.
The Asian champion Peiman Biabani struck on off draw in the first round of 74kg weight category before bringing Vladut Alexandru Stefan of Romania to his knees by technical fall 11-0. The Iranian athlete later overcame the Uzbek rival Temurjon Usmonohunov 11-0 by fall on road to the semifinals where he became a finalist by defeating Russia’s Kezhik Chymba 5-1. In his final encounter, Iran’s Biabani breezed past Selim Kozan of Turkmenistan 3-1 and won the title.
Also competing in 74kg division, Ahmad Bazri of Iran faced and downed Nikita Suchkov of Russia 8-4 in the second round since he had struck on off draw in the first one. Later, he thrashed Alexander Robert Moore of Canada 12-5 as well as Moldavia’s Gheorghi Pascalov by fall 16-6 and reached the finals. Meanwhile, Bazri failed to overcome his American contestant Mark John Hall and conceded to a Bronze.
Iran’s second gold medalist was Hossein Shahbazi who won over Uzbekistan’s Khusanboy Rakhimov 10-0 as well as Mandeep Mandeep of India 7-0 in the first two rounds. Aliaksei Rudzianok of Belarus was the third wrestler who lost to Iran’s Shabazi 12-0 giving him tickets to the semifinal round where he overwhelmed Znaur Kotciev of Russia 8-3. Before standing on top of the podium, the Iranian freestyler had to quell the German Erik Sven Thiele 7-1 in the final round.
Iran’s representative at 50-kg weight group Alireza Goudarzi, however, lost to Rahul Rahul of India 8-10 in the very first round though he took a 6-0 lead for the most part of the qualification round match.
Freestylers of Iran in the second four-weight categories, including Erfan Aeini (55kg), Saman Shojaei (66kg), Arashk Mohebi (84kg) as well as Amirreza Amiri (120kg), are slated to take up rivals at the World Junior Wrestling Championship today.
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