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Kabaddi is a team sport popular throughout South Asia, and has also spread to Southeast Asia, Japan and Iran.

............... In the middle of this rising argument many say that this year’s failure is the result of internal differences between the head of shooting federation and the head of Iran’s Athletic Education Organization. The rumors became stronger after Asadollah Heidari, the head of shooting federation, in a press conference when asked a question regarding the newly appointee for the head of shooting federation, Mr. Hashemi, awaiting Heidari’s resignation to officially take over said: “From the time that Mr. Ali-Abadi has taken over there are rumors about my resignation. In Doha these rumors became stronger and still you are asking me about them. This issue made the team weaker.” He continued: “In any case I am the head and resignation doesn’t have any meaning in this level. Hashemi is a very knowledgeable and religious person. He was mayor’s assistant and if the Athletic Education Organization wishes to change me Hashemi is the best choice. I will always support him, but it is very unfair to criticize one person (me) based on some rumors especially while I am still in the office.”

Championship and the Cellar

Over all Heidari was very upset about the criticisms; he asked, “if the athletic authorities recognize shooting as other sports such as football?” He said: “if we had put our efforts 20 years ago we wouldn’t have been put to shame today. Our supplies are awful compare to modern standards. It is as if we wish playing professional football but only practice Futsal in a small salon. Our shooting facilities look like a cellar and there are mice all over the place. Unfortunately we did not have the budget to spread shooting and make it available to everyone. There are very few people who know about the rules of the game and other branches of shooting.” Heidari mentioned the lack of foreign coach for the national team and explained, “ In Kuwait at the Asian shooting tournament we offered a Chinese coach to work with us. The first thing he asked was about our equipments. What am I going to tell? Although Mr. Ali-Abadi approved the building of a new 80-rowed salon nothing has happened yet. The women’s national shooting team’s failure roots in these shortages.”

The alleged sponsors of shooting federation turned out to sponsor Football

About the annual budget the head of the shooting federation objectively said: “ Iran Olympics committee gave us only 50 million Tomans of shooting’s annual budget and we received that on the second half of the year. Our expenses were more than 280 million Tomans. Our promising sponsor (Navy) turned out sponsoring football federation.”

Also on this issue, Shahin Nazari, the deputy manager of shooting federation on women’s affair, told Shirzanan: “one of the factors that made women’s national shooting team to perform badly was low quality equipments and old facilities. The Asian Championship was also Olympics qualification games and we did not won any spots. Teams from other countries were very comfortable around modern equipments in Kuwait tournament except Iran’s team. in the first couple of rounds our girls were a head but they did not believe that they are as good as others, so they stayed behind in the final rounds.” The deputy manager continued “ We new all along, for many years that we need better-equipped shooting facilities. The lost of women’s national team fells on sport authorities.”

Athletic Education Organization is obsessed with football only

Like the Heidari, Nazari believes that the athletic authorities are only concentrating on no other sport but Football. She explains, “Iran Shooting sport has lots of problems from coaching to equipments and budget. We should work on it with experts from other countries. We should train our coaches and build on our abilities. Look at Kuwait; only one year after Asian tournament in Qatar, they have built very well equipped facilities. We cannot even fix the salons we already have.”