Handball: IR Iran get hands on bronze

IR Iran won their first ever Asian Games handball medal, a bronze, with a 31-27 victory over Korea at Al-Gharrafa Indoor Hall on Thursday 14 December. IR Iran led from start to finish, fighting off a late comeback from the Koreans, who go home empty-handed for the first time in Asian Games history.

The Koreans looked like they were still suffering from their semifinal defeat against Qatar early on during the game and allowed IR Iran to dominate.

Hani Zamani and goalkeeper Rasoul Dehgani Najvani were instrumental in forging a healthy lead, with six goals and two penalty saves respectively. One of those penalty saves was from Korean superstar Yoon Kyung Shin. It was not the greatest half from the former World Player of the Year, who saw another seven-metre throw cannon off the bar.

IR Iran went into the break with a 14-11 lead. Only three minutes after the restart, IR Iran were in dreamland thanks to four unanswered goals which gave them an 18-11 cushion. Korea couldn't get close to their opponents and thanks to goals from Zamani, Peiman Sadeghi and Masoud Zohrabi, the young Iranian side increased their lead to 25-15.

Korea finally fought back with Yoon and Lee Tea Young scoring twice each, but IR Iran held on. When Zamani put the result beyond doubt with his 10th goal of the game, the celebrations began. After the game, IR Iran's Russian coach Yury Klimov said, "This year, we had so many problems before we even got here. We didn't have enough time to prepare and we weren't good enough in every position. And not all of the good players in our team could come due to different problems. But we just made a firm decision that we must come here and win!"

15th Asian Games, Doha 2006