Previously, Iranians have won only one silver and one bronze in Olympic Greco-Roman. But in recent years, Iran has been doing progressively better-and-better in the annual World Championships of wrestling, so hopes were high for an Olympic medal haul.
No one was disappointed.
Greco-Roman wrestling was completed as the Iran Times went to press. The freestyle competition began after press deadline.
Here is how the Iranian team did in the seven weight divisions of Greco-Roman. The last column shows how many wrestlers appeared in that event.
55-kilo GOLD 19
60-kilo GOLD 19
66-kilo 11th place 19
74-kilo No Iranian entrant
84-kilo 13th place 20
96-kilo GOLD 19
120-kilo 7th place 18
Iran started off with a bang. The competition in the lightest weight division, 55-kilo, was held Sunday to kick off wrestling with 19 men entered. And Hamid Soryan steamrolled through the field to win gold! He defeated grapplers from Kyrgyzstan, Hungary and Denmark before besting Rovshan Bayramov of Azer-baijan 3-0 in the final.
Omid Haji Noroozi repeated that string in the 60-kilo event, besting grapplers from China, Bulgaria and Japan before finishing off Revaz Lashkhi of Georgia in the final.
And in the 96-kilo division, Ghasem Gholam-Reza Rezai beat rivals from Turkey, Armenia and Cuba before defeating Russian Rustam Totrov in the final.
At 120 kilos, Bashir Asgari beat an Iraqi and an Armenia before falling to Johan Euren of Sweden in the quarterfinals and finishing in seventh place.
In the 66-kilo division, Saeed Morad Abdvali won his first match against a Turk but then fell to Frenchman Steeve Guenot and had to make do with 11th place.
At 84 kilos, Habibollah Jomeh Akhlaghi lost his first match to Cuban Pablo Enrieu Shorey Hernandez and was ranked 13th.
In a year’s worth of preliminaries, Iran qualified wrestlers in six Greco-Roman weight divisions, but not at 74 kilos. Iran qualified wrestlers to grapple in 13 of the 14 weight divisions in Greco-Roman and freestyle combined; no other team qualified for more. Iran tied with four other countries in qualifying in all but one weight division. The other four are the United States, Russia, Georgia and Egypt.