Iran Challenge to count, but not toward Tokyo

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) announced on Tuesday that the 29th Fajr Badminton International Challenge in Iran “will not count towards the Olympic qualification process”.

The January 21st announcement on the BWF website points to “questions from Member Associations regarding safety concerns of their players and coaches” and notes that despite reassurances from the Iran Badminton Federation that steps had been taken to ensure the safety of participants at the tournament, the world body had “noted that some players have withdrawn from the tournament due to their governments’ advice to their citizens to only take necessary travel to Iran at this time [emphasis in original]”.

Indeed, the government websites of Singapore, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States – all of which had players who had at least initially registered for the tournament – contain travel advisories of varying levels of urgency.  Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs updated its advisory on January 8th “In view of the rising tensions in the Middle East”, while the Government of Canada site points out that “an Iranian military commander and Iraqi paramilitary leaders were killed in a U.S. airstrike” and that “the incident has led to increased tensions in the region.”  Of those four countries, only the UK has an embassy in Iran.  The wording ranges from Canada advising against all non-essential travel to the U.S. government site, which says ‘Do not travel to Iran’ and includes a list of 8 measures for those who do, including drafting a will.

The Iran Fajr, which is the only International Challenge that does not include a mixed doubles event, is scheduled for February 4th to 8th and for the first time in at least a decade, it is to be held not in the capital Tehran, but in the southern city of Shiraz.

In a rather odd move, the BWF has decided that “points awarded in the tournament will not be taken into consideration in the final list used for Olympic qualification” but that they will “still count towards the BWF World Ranking list”.  Several singles players who are currently outside of qualifying range for the Tokyo Olympics had registered for the event but as the BWF announcement points out, some have since withdrawn.  In the last Olympic year, 2016, the Iran Fajr event was cancelled.

Yesterday, the BWF issued a few clarifications to its earlier report and announced that the deadline to withdraw without penalty had been pushed back to Monday, January 27th, a week later than was originally scheduled.