Iran's national freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling teams will not be able to participate in the ranking tournament to be held in Croatia due to visa denials.
Idman.Biz reports that the official list published by the World Wrestling Federation regarding the participants of the tournament 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 for the technical staff of the Iranian national teams. In addition, since these ranking competitions directly affect the position of wrestlers for the world championship, 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 held intensive talks with the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other official institutions to resolve the visa issue. However, these efforts have not yielded any results so far.
It should be noted that the Iranian team was also not granted a visa for the Ivan Yarygin Cup international freestyle wrestling competition to be held 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 the Iranian team visas to participate in these competitions.
Although no reason was given for the visa refusal, it is suspected that it is due to the recent events in Iran.