Idman.biz
Iran's national freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling teams will be unable to participate in the ranking tournament in Croatia due to visa denials.
Idman.Biz reports that the official list released by the World Wrestling Federation regarding the tournament participants does not include the names of Iranian wrestlers, including world and Olympic champion Hassan Yazdani.
It is noted that these competitions were of great importance to the technical staff of the Iranian national teams. Furthermore, as these ranking competitions directly affect the wrestlers' position for the World Championships, the points to be collected here were considered important for Iranian representatives.
According to the source, although the World Wrestling Federation removed the names of Iranian wrestlers from the initial list, the leadership of the Iranian Wrestling Federation has been in intense negotiations with the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other official bodies to resolve the visa issue. However, these efforts have not yielded results so far.
It should be noted that the Iranian team was also denied a visa for the Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix international freestyle wrestling tournament in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Although the Wrestling Federation started administrative procedures a month ago to obtain Russian visas for freestyle wrestlers, the Russian embassy ultimately refused to grant visas to the Iranian team to participate in these competitions.
Although no reason was given for the visa denial, it is speculated that it may be due to recent events in Iran.
