Pegah Zanganeh On Wednesday, in an interview with IRNA regarding the performance of the Iranian women’s karate team in the fifth edition of the Islamic countries games, he said: We saw good and high-level competitions and the performance of our players was also appropriate. Only injustice caused the color of the medals to change and some people did not get what they deserved.
He added: Mobina Heidari and Leila Barjali were very good in 2 heavy weights and they showed fierce fights against their prominent opponents. Mobina Heydari won against the representatives of Algeria and Turkey (European champion) and in the finals she faced the Tokyo Olympic silver medalist from the Republic of Azerbaijan, and unfortunately the referees ignored her shot in the last seconds because they should have given the gold to the Republic of Azerbaijan.
The coach of Iran’s women’s national karate team stated: Leila Barjali, with 2 good victories, went against the world’s first ranking player from Turkey, and while she was leading 6-4, she lost with clear injustice. The host’s karateka made a kick and while he was far away from Barjali’s face, he faced the judges’ favor and got three points to win. In any case, the judges were waiting for the host’s representative to do something to give him points. With all these interpretations, we were satisfied with Leila because of her strong and excellent fights.
Zanganeh stated: These results and performance were the result of training and certainly if we had participated in one or two preparatory matches before coming to Konya, our results would have been much better. In the technical staff, we are satisfied with the performance of our players according to the conditions.
Referring to the presence of the Iranian team in Baku, he said: Heydari, Borjali, Khaksar, Alipour and Bahmanyar will be sent to Karatevan Baku. After that, Turkish Karate One Series will be held, and only those who are among the top 32 karatekas can participate. For this reason, Mobina Heydari and Leila Barjali can go on the mat in this event.
The coach of the Iran team added: Although karate in the world sees the participation in Karatevans as a preparatory meeting, I hope we will get good results in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Turkey so that we can be well prepared to participate in the Asian Championship in Uzbekistan.