Weightlifting is getting harder – Sport – Kommersant

In weightlifting, which is under threat of being excluded from the Olympic program due to a long crisis, a new scandal erupted. Three countries – Russia, Iran and Yemen – have filed a lawsuit with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) demanding that the results of the last elections for key positions in the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) be cancelled. The statement of claim states that the procedures for voting and counting votes were accompanied by gross violations. The electoral congress that took place in June was indeed extremely strange: Mohammed Jaloud from Iraq was elected the head of the federation on a non-alternative basis, since 11 of his competitors withdrew. And the general secretary of the federation was elected only after a second online vote, since the results of the first one were found to be erroneous.

The fact that the weightlifting federations of Russia, Iran and Yemen sent a lawsuit to CAS in order to annul the results of the IWF elections and appoint a new congress was reported by Insidethegames.

The lawsuit alleges that the elections were conducted with numerous violations, and the principles of “transparency”, “accountability” and “fair play” were not respected during the voting.

This electoral congress, held in Tirana, Albania, in June, turned out to be extremely entertaining. The head of the federation on a non-alternative basis was chosen Iraqi representative Mohammed Jaloud, who previously served as IWF General Secretary.

In fact, 12 people applied for the presidency, but ten of them withdrew their candidacies before the start of voting. Two remained in the race – Jaloud and Qatari Yousef al-Mana. Later, al-Mana claimed that Mohammed Jaloud also signaled that he was withdrawing from the elections, but the representative of Iraq denied this.

As a result, the electoral committee came to the conclusion that it could not determine for sure whether Mr. Jalud had given any signs or not, which means that he could participate in the elections. Then Yousef al-Mana himself withdrew from the elections with the words “to please you.”

The election of the General Secretary of the IWF turned into a farce. It was announced at the congress that the post of general secretary, according to the results of the vote, is going to the Peruvian José Quiñones. But later it turned out that the IWF electoral committee made a gross mistake.

According to the rules of the federation, in order to elect a candidate for office, you need to get a simple majority of votes (50% plus one), so Mr. Quiñones needed to get 73 votes. However, he received only 68. Another 60 people voted for the Italian Antonio Urso, and sixteen voted for the Iranian Ali Moradi. In such a situation, it was necessary to hold a second round, but the IWF electoral committee declared Mr. Quiñones the winner.

The IWF Electoral Commission then apologized for its miscalculation, calling it a human error, and organized re-voting, but already online. Antonio Urso was declared the winner (he received one more vote than Quiñones, 64 to 63). The third candidate, Ali Moradi, dropped out of the race because he was disqualified by the IWF ethics and discipline committee.

The commission said that Moradi could not be elected, as he had previously “been ousted” from the presidency of the Iranian Weightlifting Federation. The Iranian, in turn, presented a letter dated June 25 from the national structure: it said that the federation approves and supports Moradi’s candidacy. The commission remained unmoved.

“We are all shocked by the voting procedure and the election results,” Maxim Agapitov, President of the FTAR, is quoted by Insidethegames. “In fact, this is a complaint (sent to CAS.— “b”) to the old corrupt system, which, for example, allowed some dubious candidates to run, but at the same time banned me from running.” Let us recall that Mr. Agapitov appealed the IWF decision to CAS and was admitted before the elections a few days before they start.

Maxim Agapitov pointed out another violation: according to him, at the congress “the commission did not publish a single voting result, announcing only the names of the winners,” while the results were published on the website with a delay.

The story of the elections, according to the Russian, “does not contribute to the restoration of the image of weightlifting and the preservation of its Olympic status.” And with this, the bar has serious problems.

Already at the Tokyo 2020 Games, weightlifting was presented in a truncated form. Only 190 athletes competed in the tournament against 260 at the 2016 Olympics. The reduction in the number of participants was due to the exclusion of a number of countries from participating in the Games, as well as the reduction in quotas for teams, which were especially often at the center of doping scandals.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has repeatedly made it clear that without the normalization of the situation in the management of the IWF, it cannot count on stabilizing relations with the Olympic leadership. And after all, the IOC has not yet given an unequivocal answer to the question of whether weightlifters will be able to speak at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. And from the program of the 2028 Games in Los Angeles (preliminary) weightlifting is generally excluded.

Ekaterina Remizova