Gholamreza Takhti in Tehran. Image from Namnak.com and distributed with the intention to share. Listen in on a group of young Iranians talking about sports and you are most likely to hear about football. The global fever over ‘the Beautiful Game’ has for decades captured the Middle Eastern country and Lionel Messi is just about the biggest global celebrity here (if slightly hated for a goal he scored against Iran in the last World Cup). But Football has always had a serious rival in Iran: wrestling. If in football, Iran remains something of a middle power (and that in the biased estimation of this writer), in wrestling, the country is objectively among the best in the world. Of the 69 medals that Iranian athletes have ever scored in Olympics, 43 were gained in wrestling. Three of those medals were won by Gholamreza Takhti, probably Iran’s best-loved athlete of all time. As the fiftieth anniversary of Takhti’s death (On January 7, 1968) approaches, plans are already underway to commemorate him. He was recently honored by a bust installed in United States Sports Academy, a regional institution in Daphne, Alabama. At a time when the US government has adopted an ever more bellicose attitude toward Iran, events like this remind us of important people-to-people contact between Iranians and Americans. Sculpture of Legendary Iran's Wrestler Takhti Unveiled at Alabama's American Sport Art Museum and Archives https://t.co/pzU4jgi74Z pic.twitter.com/PZy3uYZiBz — Alireza Taba (@alirezat) October 8, 2017 The news of Takhti being honored in the US was widely shared by Iranians. This foreign recognition generates much pride as Takhti's historical significance goes beyond athletics. He is something of a modern-day saint, a mythical figure about whose life many fantastical stories are told, few of which are based on fact. But the stories do reflect the main trends of Takhti’s life and how he, inside and outside the ring, encapsulated values that many in Iran today feel nostalgia for. Takhti was born in 1930 in a working-class district of southern Tehran. His parents were also born in the capital, although they descended from Turkic peoples of the old city of Hamedan. He competed in the Helsinki 1952 Olympics, and became one of the first Iranian athletes to win a medal in the global games. Four years later, during the 1956 Melbourne games, he would become the very first Iranian to win an Olympic gold together with fellow free-style wrester Emam-Ali Habibi, who won his gold later that same day. Takhti in the 1956 Melbourne, winning Iran's first-ever Olympics gold — Photo from Fars News Agency Takhti’s athletic achievements are considerable, however not central to his legend in Iran. Central to his hero status is a quality best described by an old Iranian concept: Pahlevani. Strictly speaking, Pahlevani refers to a traditional athletic ritual, now recognized by UNESCO as part of the world’s “intangible cultural heritage“. The ritual used to train warriors of the ancient Persian Empire, centuries before the birth of Christ. But Pahlevani has also come to mean sportsmanship, fairness and devotion to people. The belief that Takhti was a Pahlevan par excellence is exemplified by the nickname he was given: Jahan Pahlavan, or in English, the Pahlavan of the world. In the ring, Takhti was thought to always be fair to his opponents. Aleksandr Medvev, a Soviet wrestler known as being among the best in history, once told a story of how Takhti had refused to touch his right leg because he knew it was injured. But it is the stories outside the ring that have defined much of Takhti’s legacy. Growing up in the most tumultuous era of Iranian politics, Takhti was a committed socialist and political activist. He was 20 years old when the anti-colonialist Mohammad Mossadegh was elected as the prime minister of Iran. Backed by a large coalition, including the Iran’s strong communist Tudeh Party, Mossadegh nationalized oil assets and began standing up to the British and American-backed Shah. In 1953,Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup organized primarily by the CIA. Takhti was among the millions of young Iranians who had been actively supporting the prime minister. In the aftermath of the 1953 coup, as the left and nationalists tried to organize a resistance, Takhti joined the Socialist Party founded by Mohammad Ali Khonji, a Bahraini-born lawyer who had left the communist party in 1947, along with many others who defined themselves as socialists not aligned to Moscow. Already well-known as a national champion and an Olympian, Takhti was among the Socialist Party’s most popular figures. He was picked as its deputy general secretary.