Even before Dana Azran's historic silver medal at the Taekwondo World Championships held in Mexico, an incident occurred after the Iranian Mirhashem Hosseini boycotted the fight against the Israeli Ilya Ruderman.
Roderman, who competes in the weight category up to 74 kg, was supposed to meet in the first fight the Iranian who won the silver medal in 2017 - but it did not appear, which automatically advanced the Israeli to the round of 16, but there he lost to his opponent 0:2 in sets and was eliminated.
A few days before the championship, Hosseini was interviewed by an Iranian website and said: "I'm in the best possible physical shape, I'm coming to Mexico to get a good result. I want to bring an achievement to make up for the bad result in the Tokyo Olympics."
This is not the first time that Iranian athletes have boycotted fights against Israelis (and probably not the last time), when in many sports they receive instructions from their coaches to announce that they are injured or are intentionally disqualified at the weigh-in after the draw, or do not show up for the fight.
The famous story is, of course, of the judoka Said Molai, who at the 2019 World Championships intentionally lost in the semi-finals, so as not to meet Sagi Muki, but before the championship ended, he ran away to Germany and since then has represented different countries and even had time to compete against the Israeli.
Israel has not yet said the last word in the championship, when tonight in the women's qualifiers up to 53 kg, Yana Lager will participate (17:00), and in the men's qualifiers up to 63 kg, Igor Rogozhin will take part, when the championship will end on Sunday.
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