TEHRAN – Judoka Mehrdad Seidi will bear Iran’s flag at the opening ceremony of the 2021 Summer Deaflympics.

Seidi has won two bronze medals in the 2013 and 2017 Deaflympics.

He also won a gold medal in the 2015 Asia Pacific Deaf Games.

The 24th Summer Deaflympics will take place in Caxias do Sul, Brazil as main host city from May 1 to May 15. In addition to Caxias, there are events scheduled for the neighbor cites of Farroupilha and Flores da Cunha.

Originally, the latest edition of the Summer Deaflympics were scheduled to take place from December 5 to 21 last year but it was postponed to May 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The 24th edition of the competition, which claims to be the world's oldest multi-sport event after the Olympic Games having first been held in Paris in 1924, is anticipated to involve 6,500 people, including teams, technical commissions, and deaf athletes from over 90 countries.

It is set to feature 219 events in 18 sports, the same number as the 2017 version. This includes athletics, badminton, basketball, golf, table tennis, taekwondo and tennis.