Hassan Yazdani Ready to Win Gold in Olympics
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s Hassan Yazdani returned to the mat for the first time in eight months in the Ranking Series in Budapest to prove his fitness.
After winning the Asian Games, he underwent shoulder surgery and returned to training only a month ago and now is ready to win a gold medal in Paris.
Yazdani wrestled like he was never away. He ended a long day with a 12-2 win over American wrestler Trent Hidlay, his fourth win via technical superiority in as many bouts.
"I thank God that I was able to get on the mat in international competitions after seven months and 13 days," Yazdani said in an interview with UWW.org. "I started wrestling training a month ago and, it was good. With my relative preparation, I tried to get an acceptable result in this course of competition."
Yazdani said that he still needs to work on a few of his weaknesses which were exposed in the tournament. Yazdani gave up six points in his four matches and was stuck in a danger position a couple of times.
"I had a little preparation and it was around 60 percent," he said. "I hadn’t wrestled for a long time and when they announced my name for this tournament, I had about 25 days to train and it got better as time passed. When you’re not ready, you may face problems. My opponents used this opportunity and scored some points on me."
"I have some weaknesses that I hope I can fix before the Olympics so that I can wrestle better than these competitions and get the gold medal. I hope that until the Olympics, I can eliminate my weaknesses so I can win the best medal for my country and our good people."