CHARLOTTE (Steve Goldberg's Wheel World) - The roster for next year's IWBF World Championships in Hamburg is close to completion with Australia, Iran, Japan, and Korea earning the four men's slots available at the Asia-Oceania Zone Championships in Beijing. China and Australia took the two women's places. That leaves one spot each for the men and women in the Africa zone tournament coming up November 18-24.

In qualification tournaments like this, winning the whole thing is secondary to the prime objective of making it to the World Championship or Paralympic Games. Depending on the number of slots allocated to the zone, the real drama comes earlier. In the land of AOZ, for the men it was the quarterfinals, for the women the semifinals. Winning those games would bring the real prize: a trip to Germany next summer.

That's the steak. Anything beyond that is gravy.

Already booked for the 16 men's and 12 women's spots in Germany, besides the hosts, are the European men from Turkey, Great Britain, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Italy, and women from the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and Spain. Joining them from the Americas are the USA, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil men, and the Canadian and American women's sides.

 It was a record 14 teams competing in the AOZ men's competition which included the world championships debut of the Afghanistan and Hong Kong men. On the women's side, Iran joined the three teams that competed for the one slot at Rio 2016.

The fact is that there wasn't much drama as it were in the men's quarterfinals. The closest match was a 35-point spread between Korea and Thailand.

That changed in the semifinals where Japan led Iran by 9 at the half and 5 going into the 4^th quarter before the Persians outscored them 21-12 to win 80-76 and the right to face Australia in the final.

Except for the second quarter, Australia dominated the gold medal game, winning 80-54.

Australia was always the favorite to win the men's side but Iran has been on the upswing, qualifying for Rio after being suspended for the London quadrennial after forfeiting a game against the USA in Beijing. Iran had previously competed in Athens finishing 9^th, and for the last world championships in Incheon where they finished 8^th.

"Iran is one of the promising teams in wheelchair basketball with outstanding players," says head coach Mohammadreza Dastyar, "such as Omid Hadiazhar, Moreteza Abedi and Mohammadhassan Sayari, to name a few, who are playing in prominent European leagues, in Germany, Spain and Turkey."  

Indeed, Hadiazhar earned that accolade, being named the outstanding player of the tournament.

Iran claims silver and a ticket to Hamburg 2018 at the IWBF AOZ Championships. Photo courtesy of IWBF.

"We have launched our national wheelchair basketball league in three series.  In addition to that we regularly hold training camps for the Iranian national team."

There was no drama to speak of on the women's side either as it was clearly three teams playing for two spots. One was a gimme with China facing neophytes Iran, and I would like to think that there was some way that China could have managed to keep the score from becoming 108-4. An inspired Aussie team that missed the trip to Rio made sure that they would be in Germany with a 71-41 victory over Japan.

Asia Oceania Championships Final Standings

On the path to Hamburg, it's 26 down, just two to go.

On to Africa.

Steve Goldberg

FIBA

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