Athletics at the 1997 West Asian Games
Venue	Azadi Stadium

At the 1997 West Asian Games. the athletics events were held in Tehran, Iran in November 1997. It had a men's only programme containing twenty-two track and field events. All performances were affected by the altitude of the host city (3,900 ft; 1,200 m).

The host nation dominated the proceedings, winning half of the gold medals on offer (11) and more than half of the total medals with its haul of 38 medals. Kuwait was a comfortable second with eight golds among its fifteen medals, while Jordan was a distant third with one gold in its total of five medals. Seven nations reached the medal table in the athletics competition.

The competition was of a relatively low standard for an international athletics meet. Virtually all the performances were closer to the level expected in elite women's competitions. Among the better performers were Maksim Smetanin, a 1996 Olympian from Kyrgyzstan who won the triple jump with 15.90 metres. Two young athletes in the throws discus thrower Abbas Samimi (aged 20), sprinter Fawzi Al-Shammari (aged 18) and hammer thrower Dilshod Nazarov (aged 15) secured their first major medals at an international meeting – all went on to claim multiple medals at the Asian Games and Asian Athletics Championships later in their careers.

Medalists

Event	Gold		Silver		Bronze
100 m	Musaed Al-Azemi  Kuwait	10.83	Abdolghaffar Saghar  Iran	10.87	Fawzi Al-Shammari  Kuwait	11.05
200 m	Khaled Al-Johar  Kuwait	21.34	Musaed Al-Azemi  Kuwait	21.37	Maisam Delvarian  Iran	22.05
400 m	Khaled Al-Johar  Kuwait	46.51	Fawzi Al-Shammari  Kuwait	48.17	Mehdi Jelodarzadeh  Iran	49.07
800 m	Mohammad Reza Molaei  Iran	1:54.40	Boris Kaveshnikov  Kyrgyzstan	1:54.73	Mehdi Jelodarzadeh  Iran	1:55.58
1500 m	Ahmad Yazdanian  Iran	3:57.74	Farhad Heidari  Iran	3:58.24	Rasoul Mohammadbeigi  Iran	4:14.33
5000 m	Jafar Babakhani  Iran	14:39.04	Awad Al-Hasini  Jordan	14:43.94	Ahmad Zarekar  Iran	14:45.57
10,000 m	Ahmad Zarekar  Iran	30:32.38	Awad Al-Hasini  Jordan	30:56.80	Ebrahim Etaati  Iran	31:15.01
110 m hurdles	Bader Abbas  Kuwait	14.42	Zeyad Abdulrazak  Kuwait	14.70	Fadin Mohammadzadeh  Iran	14.92
400 m hurdles	Hamid Reza Fardinpour  Iran	52.53	Majid Foroutannia  Iran	53.49	Baýmyrat Aşirmyradow  Turkmenistan	54.35
3000 m steeplechase	Jafar Babakhani  Iran	9:12.10	Abolfazl Mahmoudian  Iran	9:12.17	Karim Seyedin  Iran	10:25.26
4 × 100 m relay	Kuwait	42.09	Iran	43.87	Turkmenistan	43.92
4 × 400 m relay	Kuwait	3:11.63	Iran	3:13.93	Turkmenistan	3:32.37
10,000 m walk	Gholamreza Zare  Iran	45:34	Ahmad Fazeli  Iran	46:55	Hamid Reza Kahrizi  Iran	47:23
High jump	Fakhredin Fouad  Jordan	2.10	Hassan Banitorfi  Iran	2.00	Juma Niýazow  Turkmenistan	1.95
					Alireza Ghiasi  Iran
Pole vault	Hassan Mirseifi  Iran	4.20	Mehdi Mobini  Iran	4.20	Abdolmajid Sotoudehnia  Iran	4.10
Long jump	Khaled Al-Bakheet  Kuwait	7.35	Husein Al-Youhah  Kuwait	7.19	Aleksandr Tumanow  Turkmenistan	6.79
Triple jump	Maksim Smetanin  Kyrgyzstan	15.90	Mehrzad Charkhian  Iran	15.75	Khaled Al-Bakheet  Kuwait	15.35
Shot put	Ali Rahmani  Iran	16.97	Ali Sayyah  Iran	16.51	Tareq Al-Najjar  Jordan	15.80
Discus throw	Abbas Samimi  Iran	52.90	Tareq Al-Najjar  Jordan	51.90	Fariborz Malek  Iran	51.04
Hammer throw	Naser Al-Jarallah  Kuwait	64.06	Ghorban Salahi  Iran	63.80	Dilshod Nazarov  Tajikistan	59.94
Javelin throw	Firas Al-Mahamid  Syria	71.10	Ghanem Zaid  Kuwait	65.94	Danghatar Yaghouti  Iran	65.84
Decathlon	Ali Feizi  Iran	6213	Abdollah Hedayati  Iran	5958	Hamid Asiabi  Iran	5935

Medal table

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Iran (IRI)	11	13	14	38
2	Kuwait (KUW)	8	5	2	15
3	Jordan (JOR)	1	3	1	5
4	Kyrgyzstan (KGZ)	1	1	0	2
5	Syria (SYR)	1	0	0	1
6	Turkmenistan (TKM)	0	0	5	5
7	Tajikistan (TJK)	0	0	1	1
Totals (7 entries)		22	22	23	67

References

• West Asian Games. GBR Athletics. Retrieved on 2013-10-06.

External links

• Official website