Iranians win two more golds in Asian Games wrestling
Iran remained as the team to beat in the 2010 Asian Games wrestling competition. The Middle East giants added two more gold medals to their treasure chest on Wednesday to stay on top of the medal standings.
Sadegh Goudarzi topped the men's freestyle 74kg division while Jamal Mirzaei ruled the 84kg class.
Goudarzi, a world silver medallist, beat Japan's Kazuyuki Nagashima 3-0 in the final. The Iranian earlier defeated Indonesian Fahriansyah (3-0), Kyrgyzstan's Ilgiz Dzhakypbekov (3-0) and South Korean Lee
Yun-seok (3-0) to reach the final.
Lee and Mongolian Gombodorj Dorjvaanchig shared the bronze medals. The South Korean downed Dzhakypbekov 3-1 while the Mongolian blanked Syria's Mazen Kdmane 4-0 in the third-place play-offs.
Mirzaei made it a double victory for Iran by winning over South Korea’s Lee Jae-sung 3-0 in the final of his event. His other victims were Turkmenistan's Ibabekir Bekdurdiyev (4-0), Syrian Maher Alkhayat
(4-0) and Kazakh Yermek Baiduashov (3-0).
The bronze medals were claimed by Baiduashov and Mongolia's Urvee Usukhbaatar, who posted wins over Alkhayat (4-0) and India's Ram Vir (3-1), respectively.
Japan's Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu bagged the only other gold medal at stake for the day. He beat world champion Mehdi Taghavi Kermani 3-1 in the 66kg final, preventing an Iranian sweep of the events. Yonemitsu
made it to the final by beating Kyrgyzstan's Azat Donbaev (3-1), Indian Pradeep Kumar (3-0) and North Korean Yang Chun-song (3-1).
In the bronze medal bouts, Yang beat Kumar 3-1 while Leonid Spiridonov of Kazakhstan triumphed over Ikhtiyor Navruzov of Uzbekistan 3-0.
"I put everything I could into that match. This is the result. Until I win a gold at the Olympics I can't relax," Yonemitsu told
Kyodo News.
It was Japan's second gold in the wrestling competition following Kohei Hasegawa's victory in the Greco-Roman 55kg gold on Sunday.
Nagashima, for his part, was happy with his silver finish.
''I haven't been able to deliver good results on the world stage. I think getting to the final shows how much I have improved,” the Japanese said.
Iran is comfortably at the top of the medal standings with six golds, one silver and one bronze. Japan is in second place with a 2-3-3 haul while Kazakhstan is in third spot with a 1-2-5 production.
Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan were the other countries that have won golds in the wrestling competition so far.
The wrestling competition will resume on Thursday featuring bouts in the men's freestyle 96kg and 120kg and women's freestyle 48kg weight categories.
Tags: