YAZDANICHARATI Hassan

General
WEIGHT CLASS CHANGE
He won a gold medal in the 74kg weight class at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. He has since moved up to the 86kg class. "My plans get adjusted based on my weight. Throughout the years, as I got heavier, I myself decide what weight class to compete in. With the new rules, cutting significant weight is difficult and you are forced to compete in higher weights. My natural weight is 89kg, and I think wrestling in the 86kg is ideal for me. If I gain weight, then I will wrestle in higher weights too, and I would like to experience that, but at the moment [speaking in 2020] my weight does not allow that and I think the 86kg is good for me." (olympicchannel.com, 25 Jun 2020; khabarvarzeshi.com, 06 Jun 2020)

DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS
He said that despite being interested in wrestling since childhood, he almost quit the sport early on in his training. "Before I joined a club, I wrestled with my brothers inside and outside the house. There was a site where traditional wrestling like Louchu [a form of wrestling from the Mazandaran province in the Islamic Republic of Iran] would take place. Night and day I watched it and I even participated in this competition once or twice. Six months after I had started training, I wanted to quit, because it was a hard sport, but under pressure from my father I entered a provincial competition in Mazandaran and finished second. This increased my motivation and became the reason I continued wrestling." (tasnimnews.com, 27 Mar 2017)