The third day of the World Taekwondo Championships, held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, opened on Wednesday morning with the participation of Olympic medalist Avishag Samberg.
Samberg, competing in the under-49kg weight category and ranked seventh in the world, automatically advanced to the second round, where she awaited the winner between Iran's Ghazal Soltani, last year's world cadet champion, and Egyptian Yana Khattab.
The Iranian, who started the fight well and also won the first round, shifted gears in the next two rounds when she stood on the surface and allowed her opponent to score points, without any real defense. She also tried to stage an injury, but eventually continued the fight, until the expected loss.
This is not the first time (and probably not the last) that Iranian athletes have avoided competing against Israelis, with the most famous case being judoka Saeed Moulay at the 2019 World Championships, when he received threats against his life and family and had to deliberately lose in the semifinals in order not to meet Sagi Moki in the final.
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Following this incident, Moulay fled at the end of the competition in Tokyo and emigrated to Germany, while the World Judo Union (IJF) decided to punish the Iranian federation and suspended it from all competitions.
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