Athlete banned from sport for life after being spotted shaking competitor’s hand
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/ @mostafa.rajaee
A handshake between two sportsmen ended in one of them being booted from the sport for life, for shaking his competitors hand.
While many watch sport to cheer on their national team, others like to sit back and see how athletes treat each other - as it can be an indicator of their personalities.
But when one weightlifter at the World Masters Weightlifting Championships last year in Poland decided to extend a hand to who he was up against, it was all over for his career.
Mostafa Rajaei is an Iranian weightlifter who placed second overall in the men's over-35 age group in the 240-pound division at the event.
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He even broke the world record for the clean and jerk with a lift of 430-pounds.
At the time, Rajaei took to Instagram and admitted that he 'could not work well' due to pain in his elbow, but 'in the two beats of God and gratitude, I became the first, and moved the world record by one kilogram'.
However, it would be the last time Rajaei would compete for Iran.
As a greeting or goodbye, a decent handshake is more than normal in sport.
However, that doesn't seem to be the case with the Iran Weightlifting Federation, after Rajaei shook hands with Israeli competitor, Maksim Svirsky.
The federation announced: "The weightlifting federation bans athlete Mostafa Rajaei for life from entering all sports facilities in the country and dismisses the head of the delegation for the competition, Hamid Salehinia.”
This is because to the federation, the handshake was 'unforgivable'.
They swiftly fired Salehinia as a result of the handshake and claimed that Rajaei had been 'sent with the support of the federation', but 'crossed the red lines of the Islamic Republic' by his friendly gesture.
Why?
Because the federation has prohibited contact between Iranian and Israeli athletes for years.
This could be because Iran does not recognise Israel as a nation, and also disallows any contact between Iranian and Israeli athletes.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei previously asked competitors in 2021 'not to shake hands with a representative of the (Israeli) criminal regime to obtain a medal'.
Iranian athletes are also notably given medical certificates and disqualified from events to avoid Israeli competitors.
This means that Rajaei's handshake was a violation of the country's rules about Israel.
Iran recently even called for Israel to be banned from competing at the Paris Olympics.
Iran’s foreign ministry wrote on X, formerly Twitter last week: “Iran condemns the reception and protection of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Paris, demanding their exclusion over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza."
Iran and Israel are unlikely to be on good terms anytime soon, and a few Iranian sportspeople have even defected to compete for other countries to avoid facing the same fate.
These include Alireza Firouzja, a chess player who now plays under the French flag after Iran banned him from competing in the 2019 world championships because he may have had to face an Israeli opponent.