Ehsan Hadadi of Iran celebrates his Discus Final victory (© Getty Images)
In Iran the first major competition of the season took place last Thursday (22) with the Iranian Clubs League meeting in Tehran hosting 250 athletes from 29 nationwide teams with some promising marks being recorded especially by middle distance runners.
800m runners Sajad Moradi and Ehsan Mohajer Shojaei are taking giant strides aiming at Beijing. Of the two, Moradi is the vanguard. Already having run 1:46.02 this season in Tehran on 26 April 1:46.02, the national record holder (1:44.74 in 2005) left all his opponents far behind on Thursday clocking 1:45.14. It should be noted that the competition venue is at over 1000m of altitude.
Mohajer Shojaei (1:45.90 PB) too, is a great athlete who won at the World Student Games last year. He has yet to run 800 metres this season but according to his training schedule for Olympics, he ran 400 metres in Iranian League and took the first place in 46.51 seconds. His 800m season’s debut will be in the Znamensky Memorial in Russia on 15 June.
Ehsan Hadadi, the 2004 World Junior champion in the Discus Throw, is the star of Iranian athletics but was not at the Club League meeting because he was preparing to take part in the IAAF World Athletics Tour meeting in Hengelo, the Netherlands on Saturday (24 May). There he took a major victory with a throw of 68.52m.
That throw was an Asian record and marks the 23-year-old out as a candidate for the medal podium in Beijing. Ehsan Hadadi is also the Asian Games champion and took the IAAF World Cup silver medal in Athens in 2006.
Mohammad Reza Akhoundi for the IAAF
