🔻The strange elimination of Armin Esmaeili, Iran’s representative in the 45 kg weight class, from the semi-finals of the world cadet (youth) freestyle wrestling competitions has been accompanied by different accounts from the media.

🔹Fars News Agency reported that Esmaeili was unable to reach the competition hall on time due to being left behind at the hotel, and therefore, without taking to the mat, he won by default against his Azerbaijani opponent and lost his chance to reach the final and win a gold medal. Referring to the fact that the schedule of the matches is provided to the coaching staff in advance, Fars raised the question of why the necessary information was not given to the Iranian wrestler and how such a thing could happen.

🔹In contrast, Mohsen Sourian, head coach of Iran’s national cadet freestyle wrestling team, attributed the cause of this incident to the sudden change of the match schedule by the organizers and communication problems. However, ISNA rejected this account and wrote that the official competition program had been published by the United World Wrestling (UWW) for some time and that the bouts were held according to the same timeline.

🔹According to this report, only the matches on the first day began at 18:00 due to the opening ceremony, but the competitions on the second day were held according to the plan starting at 17:00, and it appears that Iran’s team technical staff, assuming that the matches would start at 18:00, were not present in the hall on time.