Please see (Part I) and (Part II) here.

Please watch in Farsi Version

Shirzanan:The fifty-seventh birth day of Touran Shadpur, the former Iran women’s track and filed champion, who passed a way last year.

Mahin Gourji, a forment volleyball player, started her career as the sport reporter in 90’s with Abrar newspaper. As a young volleyball player she always wished to read the reports and news of their team and league in a newspaper. She said, “We needed people who knew sports and were specialists in one of two fields. At the same time we needed someone who can write well, who can describe the events as if you are seeing a live video or a photo, Someone who could write a picturesque report to cover the lack of photography in women’s sports in Iran.” Gourji continued, “ I had to break the old fashion ways, I decided to work on women’s sports just to give our girls a better chance to be recognized. I was not the only one, Forough Asemani and Parvin Moghaddam also worked as women’s sports reporters.” She explained, “ I worked for a long time, but I had to leave mostly because there were lots of young girls out there looking for a job. Also they started to close down the newspapers one after the other. And the filed got more competitive. My male colleagues got offensive every time I did a better job.” about the current situation of women’s sports in Iran she said, “ It is hard to continue with these old formulas, if we see women’s sports as a political and kind of a security issue, women’s sports won’t progress as much as it should. Of course when you interview the sportswomen and athletes they don’t complain much, but it is obvious that they are not satisfied. We have still many religious clerics who are against the deployment of women’s national sports team to international countries.”

About Shirzanan Mahin Gourji said, “ starting Shirzanan is a courageous act. The least it does is to pass the information about the women’s sports in Iran. But it still needs to work on its professional literature. I don’t mean that Shirzanan is not a professional magazin, I just think Shirzanan has lots of potentials, which needs to work on.”

Asiyeh Amini the sports page executive in Zan explained, “ I was never a sports reporter, the only reason I started to work on the sports page was Ms. Afshar, who I wanted to work with and he was the head of the sports division and the other was Mrs. Hashemi’s view on women’s sports. She is an extraordinary woman. She was the Tehran candidate in the fifth Islamic parliament and she started arguing to get more support for women’s sports, like women’s cycling. I started working in an environment where they respected women’s sports, we worked 10 hours a day.”

Amini explained, “ The hardest part was the layout of the women’s sports page. We couldn’t use lots of pictures and the editor in chief wanted everything to be perfect; she wanted the sport news become the headline of the newspaper. I had to fource the photographers to take symbolic pictures where we don’t see anyone’s head or face, only their hands and the ball.” She continued, “ With all these carefulness we still got many warnings form the government.” She see’s the achievement of Zan newspaper in “the sports page of Zan, brought uo the women’s sports and presented it as an important issue which needs the attention of the society and the government.”

.......... Then the grand Ayatollah did me a great favor, he wrote a letter addressed to the Auto sports federation and its authorities saying there is no problem regarding a men coaching a women when they are in two different cars. It seems years a go now.”

Male coaches have more experience than female coaches in Iran

Track and field women athletes were among the first in Iran that got the permission of working with a male coach and that is perhaps one of the reasons for grate achievements of women in that athletic filed. Leila Ebrahimi, a runner and Asian track and field bronze medalist, has the experience of working with a male coach. For Shirzanan she explains, “ right now most of our women runners work with men coaches and trainers. Before the merging of women’s sports with men’s federations we had few women coaches but now we can use the federation resources. Track and filed is a group activity and one male coach has 4 to 5 athletes working with him about 2 of them are women.” Ebrahimi believes that working and running against male athletes helps women to improve their speed. She said, “ I don’t want to say it but I truly have no one to compete with amoung girls. Boys in general have stronger bodies and I improve my performance by competeing against them.”

In smaller towns and cities farther from the capital the situation is dramatically different. Ebrhimi explains, “In cities other than Tehran women are still working with women coaches. In Iran men have more experience in coaching because they are frequently deployed to foreign countries for international games and they have seen a lot more than women coaches. They don’t allow women to go to international fields easily.” Ebrahimi corrected herself by saying; “ Of course this is not the case for every women coach. Some of them are really strong and experienced.”

Women fencers are also among the fortunate women athletes who were allowed to choose to work with male coaches. In fact they work with one of the most well known coaches in Fencing, Anatoly Petrosian from Armenia. One of the officials from Iran Fencing Federation explains for Shirzanan, “ Since the athletic clothing that is used in Fencing covers the whole body, we did nor face any disagreements.”

Next to fencers and runners women golfers also use male coaches. Firozeh Mohammad-Zamani, Iran’s women’s golf champion, explains, “no one wants to be gender biased but it is the fact, when men are easily deployed to international competitions it is only natural for them to have more experience. We need to use these expertise to our advantage.”

But there are still lots of women’s athletic teams in Iran that are not allowed to work with male coaches and unfortunately their numbers outgrows the number of the teams that have the permission to work with male coaches. Among them we can point to Iran women’s national Taekwondo team. From taekwondo team, Sara Khaoshjamal-Fekri, the Olympic qualifier is still waiting for a permission to work with a man. Mehrooz Saaie another women taekwondo player explains, “ If we had the permission to work with men we could achieve much more than this. Men are still prohibited form entering women’s division. I sometimes practice with Hadi, my brother, to increase my physical power. But even that is not allowed.”

In volleyball and basketball the same old regulations are still in effect. Although there are some rumors that Davarzani, the head of volleyball federation, in on of the meetings has said that they are looking for a male coach for women’s national volleyball team, the issue is not publicly announced yet.

Football as the most popular sports in Iran has the same problem. Although it is obvious that male coaches in football are the bests, Iran women’s team still struggling with old regulations; even in one of the games the male assistant coach of the women’s football team, Mr. Lotfi, was escorted out of the stadium during the game by security only for being a man.

Some less popular sports like squash are in worse situation; they are not even allowed to watch men’s squash games. Sahar Saremi, a national team member in squash said, “ at the beginning there was a Pakistany male coach and he held the sessions in Kish Island and was not allowed to work in Tehran, after a while that was banned too.”

when Sara Khoshjamal-Fekri qualified for the Olympics final in Beijing, it was the most important and historic event of the past year for women’s sports. This was the first time that a female Iranian athlete qualified for the Olympic final - by winning in Vietnam, Sara Khoshjamal has opened the door for others to follow.

It’s clear that in Iran we need to put much more effort in to promoting women’s sports and that this effort will pay off: this year women have proved that they are capable of winning. Iran’ s Taekwondo Federation gave this chance to the women’s team and provided them with the required facilities: in return it got its reward by becoming the first sport in Iran to send a woman to the Olympics.

Sara Khoshjamal Fekri also won the silver medal in the World Open Taekwondo tournament in Netherlands. Two other girls besides Sara, Zahra Karimi and Farzaneh Dehghan, have qualified for the unrecognised Olympic sport, Sanshou.

In football, Iran’s women’s team had a very good year as well. The newly formed Iran women’s national football team has become the runner-up in the West Asia cup and qualified for the women’s Asia Football Confederation for the first time. In the qualifying round, Iran lost 3-1 to India but they recovered quickly by going on to win the return match 4-1. Iran is drawn in a group with Vietnam, China Taipei and Myanmar. In the first month of the Persian new year, April 2008, Iran women’s football team will play the next qualifying round of the tournament in Vietnam.

Last year boating was another victorious field in women’s sports in Iran. The performances of women’s boating team was so satisfying both in Iran and outside the country that Ahmad Donya-Mali, the head of Iran Canoe/Kayak & Water-ski Federation, decided to give the women’s canoe team the highest fund in the federation. last year Iran women’s rowing team won one gold and three silver medals in the Singapore international competitions. Nasim Baniyaghoob won the gold and Homa Hosseini and Bahareh Alamdar won the silver medals. Also in calm water Kayak world championship in Romania Iran women’s team won 5 bronze medals. Also in grass skiing Fatemeh Mahdavian, the only Iranian woman grass skier, got in the fifth place in the world championship in Austria.

In chess, Shady Paridar won a silver medal in indoors Macao games. Also in Macao games Iran women’s track and fields became fifth. The newly formed Women’s Futsal team did not do very well in Macao games due to their lack of experience.

As the first timers, Iran women’s team handball had their first international appearance and became 7th in the youth Asian championships. Another last year’s good news was the new format for the women’s basketball and volleyball teams. In Cycling for the first time Iran women’s national team was deployed to Thailand for Asian championship.

In the past Persian year many construction sites for women’s sports facilities were began their building process all over the country; the largest of them all is the 40 thousand-seat Stadium in Tehran. For the New Year we sincerely hope that women’s sport in Iran continues its growth and the process that it has begun.