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Iranian discus thrower Ehsan Hadadi, a favourite to win gold, risks courting controversy when he wears a jersey with the inscription ‘Ya Hossein’ — a reference to the third imam of Shiite Islam

TEHRAN: Twelve years ago, an Iranian schoolboy named Ehsan Hadadi took aim at goal in a school handball match and threw the ball with such power it broke the goalpost. His stunned sports teacher, Mr Garshasbi, was suitably impressed. “You must take part in a throwing sport,” he advised.

Hadadi turned to the most ancient throwing discipline — the discus — and after years of hard work to perfect his extraordinary talent, he is one of the favourites to win gold at the Beijing Olympics.

Iran has never come close to winning a medal of any colour in athletics since the country’s first appearance in the Olympics of 1948 in London and the responsibility resting on Hadadi’s broad shoulders is huge.

“Garshasbi trained me and in the fifth grade I came fifth in the Tehran schools tournament,” Hadadi said in an interview before the Beijing Olympics. “I’ve always loved throwing ever since I was a child. Even when we went to the Caspian Sea, I threw rocks into the sea,” he said as he took a break from one of his training sessions at Tehran’s Azadi stadium.

Hadadi has already made history by becoming the first Iranian to win a medal at global athletics championships when he took gold at the 2004 World Junior Championships. He then won gold in the 2006 Asian Games. The Iranian has already been in top form this year, throwing a season’s best of 69.12 metres in June in Berlin, just 20 centimeters short of his personal best.

Only Germany’s Gerd Kanter, with 71.88 meters, and the Lithuanian Virgilijus Alenka, with 71.25 meters, have thrown further this year. Hadadi — who is sponsored by US giant Nike — trains for 10 sessions a week. 

“I wake up at 8 am but I start my training at around 11 am, then have lunch and and do physical training,” said Hadadi, who is 1.93 metres tall and weighs 127 kilos. “Every step I make closer to winning a medal I become happier. If I achieve my own personal best I will win a medal and I will have a lion’s heart. If I win a medal one of the people on the top of the thank you list will be Garshasbi, my fifth grade gym teacher,” he said.
Hadadi, like many top Iranian sportsmen, has a Russian coach who he chats to in fluent Russian. “If it is my day, which it should be, I will win something. You know, people here should not get their hopes so high, after all it is an athletics medal, something unprecedented. Even a bronze medal would be a masterpiece compared to all of Iran’s medals in the Olympics.”

Iran has only managed to win medals in wrestling, weightlifting and taekwondo and a medal in athletics would mark a breakthrough in a sport traditionally dominated by Western countries and Africa. The devoutly religious Hadadi, who like the overwhelming majority of Iranians is a Shiite Muslim, earned some controversy at the Asian Games in Qatar by wearing a religious slogan on his competition vest. The inscription read “Ya Hossein” — a reference to the third imam of Shiite Islam who was massacred along with his followers at the battle of Karbala, an event still mourned by Shiites around the world.

He received a warning from the Asian Games organisers that athletes cannot adorn their kit with religious slogans, a practice also favoured by Iran’s Olympic weightlifting champion Hossein Rezazadeh.

However, Hadadi is prepared for any eventuality. “Nike has designed four kits for me, two of them with ‘Ya Hossein’ and other two without it. So if the organizers do not allow me to wear the ones with the inscription, then I have the one without it. I adore and respect the imam Hussain and he is and, will always be, in my heart,” he said.