Imagine the sound for a second, that distinct
rhythmic thumping of rotor blades just cutting
through the air. It's loud. Right, it's loud.
It's vibrating right in your chest. The date
is February 23, 2023, and you are in Baft County.
Which is this really rugged, mountainous region
down in the Kerman province of Iran. Exactly.
It's not a place you just stumble upon, right?
You go there with a purpose. And the purpose
here was... High -level government business.
This wasn't some tourism flight or a joyride.
You have a helicopter coming in for a landing
at a sports complex. Carrying top -tier officials.
Right, exactly. Officials who are there to inspect
infrastructure, which is the kind of routine
trip that happens, I mean, a thousand times a
year in governments all over the world. Until
in a split second it isn't routine anymore? Yeah.
The helicopter is on its final approach. It's
just about to touch down and then chaos. Something
fails. The stability goes and the machine just
crashes into the ground. It's a mess of twisted
metal dust confusion. It's terrifying. The impact
is completely catastrophic. It's severe enough
that a top deputy, a man named Esmail Ahmadi,
is killed instantly. It is a tragedy by every
definition of the word. It's a harrowing image.
Yeah. And usually, you know, when we see a headline
like minister involved in helicopter crash. Yeah.
The narrative is very specific. Oh, sure. We
think about the political fallout, the succession
plans, the bureaucracy of it all. We picture
these men in suits who spend their entire lives
in air conditioned offices. Yeah. But in this
specific instance, the man they pulled out of
that wreckage alive but badly injured wasn't
your typical bureaucrat. That is the understatement
of the year. The survivor was Hamid Sejati. And
the reason we are doing a deep dive on him today
isn't just because he survived a crash. It's
because if you look at his life surviving a massive
physical trauma, like that almost seems thematic.
We aren't just looking at a politician here.
We are looking at a man who has lived three completely
distinct high intensity lives. It is a fascinating
Venn diagram. You have the Olympic athlete who
absolutely dominated the Asian continent for
a decade. Then you have the Ph .D. scholar who
didn't just play sports but literally studied
the cellular biology of the human engine. Yeah.
And finally, you have the minister of sport and
youth. It's so rare to find someone who embodies
the subject matter of their ministry so literally.
So here's our mission for this deep dive. We
are going to unpack the life of Hamid Sajjadi,
but we're framing it through a very specific
lens, which is endurance. We want to figure out
how a guy goes from the grueling 10 ,000 meter
track to the halls of government. And whether
the discipline required to break physical records
helps or hinders you when you're navigating the
complex waters of politics. Exactly. It's the
ultimate case study of the practitioner politician.
Does being the absolute best at doing the thing
make you the best? at governing the thing. That
is the question. Let's start at the beginning.
Or rather, let's start at the starting line.
Because long before he was His Excellency, he
was simply Sajjadi the runner. And looking at
the stack of research we've pulled, calling him
a runner feels like calling a Ferrari a car.
It's a bit reductive, isn't it? To really understand
Sajjadi, you have to understand his specific
event. Because he was a prolific middle and long
distance runner. But his signature, his absolute
kingdom, was the 3 ,000 -meter steeplechase.
Okay, stop right there. Because for you listening
who maybe watches the Olympics once every four
years and uses the track events as a designated
snack break, we need to explain the steeplechase.
Because it is a weird, weird race. It is arguably
the most disruptive, rhythm -breaking event in
all of track and field. Think about a normal
5K or a 10K. It's hypnotic. Left foot, right
foot, breathe. Exactly. You get into a zone.
The steeplechase destroys that zone. It's 3 ,000
meters, but you have to clear 28 large fixed
barriers and 7 water jumps. And when you say
barriers, we aren't talking about those lightweight
plastic hurdles that sprinters just kind of knock
over if they clip them? Oh, no, no. These are
heavy, solid beams. They are immovable objects.
If you hit your knee on one one, the barrier
doesn't move. Your knee breaks. Wow. And then
there's the water jump. You clear the hurdle
and land directly in a pit of water. So now immediately
your shoes are wet. They're heavy. Your socks
are squishing. That sounds miserable. The temperature
of your muscles changes instantly from the cold
water. And you have to do this lap after lap.
It honestly sounds like a medieval torture device
that someone disguised as a sport. It's controlled
suffering. And it requires a very specific physiology.
You need the aerobic engine of a marathoner to
actually run the distance. But you need the explosive
power of a hurdler to clear. those solid barriers.
Right. And the agility to recover your stride
immediately upon landing. It breaks your rhythm
constantly. And Sajjadi wasn't just participating
in this torture. He was arguably the best in
Asia at it for the entire 1990s. Let's look at
the gold standard here. I'm looking at the notes.
1991 Asian Athletics Championships in Kuala Lumpur.
That was the big breakout. He takes the gold
in the 3 ,000 meter steeplechase. But what is
fascinating to me. isn't the single win. In sports,
you see flash in the pan athletes all the time,
right? They have one great summer. Exactly. But
Sojati, he was a fixture. He medaled at the Asian
Championships in 1993 in Manila, then again in
1995 in Jakarta, then 1998 in Fukuoka. and 2000
in Jakarta again. That is a 10 -year reign. That
is a full decade of dominance. It is. In a sport
that literally pounds your joints into dust,
I mean, the impact forces in steeplechase are
massive. When you land in that water pit, staying
on the podium for a full decade is a complete
anomaly. It speaks to a level of physical maintenance
and discipline that is just off the charts. And
he wasn't a one trick pony either. No, he grabbed
a gold at the 1993 Asian Cross Country Championships
in Jakarta, too. So put him on a synthetic track,
put him in the mud, put him over barriers. The
guy was winning. He also took silver at the 1998
Asian Games in Bangkok. So purely on the continental
level within Asia, he was a titan. He was the
guy everyone else was looking at when they lined
up at the starting line. However, and this is
where we really have to be realistic about the
tiers of elite sport. there is often a massive,
massive gap between regional dominance and the
global stage. Right, the Olympics, the big show.
Sajjadi did make it, though. He represented Iran
at two Summer Olympics. Barcelona in 1992 and
Atlanta in 1996. And this is where the reality
of the pyramid sort of sets in. In Barcelona,
he ran the 5 ,000 meters. His time was 14 minutes
and 4 .54 seconds. Now I want to pause on that
number for a second. 14 minutes, 4 seconds. Because
to the average... person that sounds fast but
let's contextualize it if i go to my local gym
and set the treadmill to its absolute maximum
speed i'm probably not hitting that pace oh absolutely
not you'd fly off the back immediately running
five kilometers in 14 minutes is blistering it's
under three minutes per kilometer most people
can't sprint that fast for one block no way but
in the context of the olympics in barcelona It
wasn't enough to get past the preliminaries.
That is wild to me. You can be the fastest man
in Asia, run a pace that would kill a normal
person, and still not even make the final. It
really highlights just how steep the competition
is at that global level, especially against the
East African runners, the Kenyans, the Ethiopians,
who have historically just owned these distances.
Then in 1996, in Atlanta, Sashadi stepped up
to the 10 ,000 meters. The 10K. 25 laps, the
track. It's a total grind. He finished with a
time of 29 minutes and 22 .65 seconds. Sub 30
minutes for a 10K. I mean, that is the holy grail
for serious runners. It is an elite time. Breaking
the 30 -minute barrier is a lifetime achievement
for even semi -pro athletes. But again, no medal.
However, we really have to look at this from
the Iranian perspective. Because for his country...
He was an absolute legend. He holds multiple
indoor and outdoor national track records for
Iran. Yeah, I have some of those stats here just
for color. His personal best in the 1500 meters
is 3 minutes and 41 .66 seconds. And for his
signature event, the steeplechase, he clocked
8 minutes and 33 .89 seconds. These are numbers
that stood as benchmarks. They really are. So
by the late 90s, he has proven his physical endurance.
He basically has nothing left to prove on the
track. And usually this is the part of the sports
biography where the athlete retires. Right. They
open a car dealership or a shoe store. Yeah,
maybe they start a training camp or they become
a TV commentator. The physical prime ends and
they just sort of coast on their reputation.
But for Sajjadi, this was just the end of Act
One. And this is where I think the story gets
really interesting, especially for anyone listening
who has gone through a major career pivot. He
didn't just retire. He pivoted to the library.
He went deep into academia. And he didn't go
for a soft degree just to have letters after
his name. He earned a Ph .D. in physiology. A
Ph .D. So he goes from using his body to break
records to studying exactly how that body functions
at a cellular level. Why is that specific field
significant? Why not sports management or business?
Because physiology is the mechanics of the machine.
It's the study of how living organisms actually
function. By choosing this field, Sajjadi was
signaling that he wanted to understand the why
behind his own success. He wasn't satisfied just
knowing how to run. He wanted to understand VO2
max lactic acid thresholds, cardiac remodeling,
and how the body handles heat stress. He became
a lecturer at Azad University, specifically at
the Central Tehran branch. I just have to imagine
walking into your physiology class as a 19 -year
-old student, and your professor is a two -time
Olympian who holds the national record. You'd
probably listen when he tells you about lung
capacity. It certainly adds a huge layer of authority.
It's the difference between theory and practice.
When he lectures on respiratory distress during
high -intensity interval training, he isn't quoting
a textbook he read. He's remembering the exact
feeling of his lungs burning in the humidity
of Kuala Lumpur back in 91. So we have the athlete
and we have the scholar. Now we enter Act III,
the statesman, the political arena. And this
transition suggests a very technocratic approach
to leadership. It implies that when he eventually
moves into administration, he isn't just a figurehead.
He actually understands the biological reality
of what an athlete goes through. Right. He knows
the science of recovery, of training, loads of
injury prevention. He's looking at the athletes
not just as national assets or medal counts,
but as physiological systems that really need
to be maintained. But getting into the minister's
chair wasn't a straight sprint for him. It was,
well, it was a bit like the steeplechase again.
He hit a barrier early on. That's a good way
to put it. He had a false start in politics.
He was actually nominated previously by former
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the sports
minister. This was years before he actually got
the job. But he never took office then. No, he
didn't. And without getting bogged down in the
intricacies of the Majlis, which is the Iranian
parliament, it's important to note that nominations
often get rejected for political reasons. It's
a common fiction point between the president
and the parliament. So Sujati was on the radar.
He was the guy they wanted. But he didn't get
the baton passed to him that time around. He
had to wait. And waiting is hard for a sprinter.
But the opportunity came back around. Fast forward
to August 2021. President Ibrahim Raisi is forming
his cabinet. And this time, Saad Jati gets the
call. August 25, 2021. He officially takes office
as the Minister of Sport and Youth. So what does
this all mean for us looking back at it? We've
got the guy who ran the steeplechase now running
the entire ministry. It feels like the completion
of an arc. He's gone from the person running
on the track to the person teaching about the
track to the person building the track, metaphorically
speaking. It is deeply significant. In a lot
of governments, and this isn't unique to Iran
by any means, the minister of sport is often
a pure political appointee. Maybe they helped
with a campaign or they just have the right connections,
but they've never sweat on a field in their lives.
Having Sejati there meant having someone who
knew the smell of the locker room, the pressure
of the starting gun. This brings up the whole
concept of the practitioner politician. We see
this debate in a lot of sectors. People say we
need a doctor to run the health care system or
we need a general to run the Defense Department.
The logic is that because they did the job, they
will be inherently better at managing the job.
That's the assumption. Yes, he knows what we
need, but it's a double edged sword. How so?
Because the skills that make you an elite practitioner
are often the exact opposite of the skills that
make you a good administrator. Think about an
elite athlete like Sujati. To run a sub 30 minute
10K, you have to be somewhat selfish. Your world
has to be incredibly narrow. It's your diet,
your sleep, your training, your lane. You have
to block out the rest of the world to focus purely
on your performance. Right. You can't be worrying
about everyone else's problems when you're on
the final lap. Exactly. But politics. Administration.
That is entirely about everyone else's problems.
It's broad. It's messy. It involves constant
compromise. You can't just work harder to get
a budget passed the way. You can work harder
to shave a second off your track time. So while
Sojati had the credibility, the transition from
the sort of selfishness of elite sport to the
service of administration is often much harder
than people think. That's a really fascinating
point. The brute force method just doesn't work
in bureaucracy. But Sejani did have that PhD.
He had the academic side, which suggests he could
think systematically, not just individually.
He did. And he served in that role for almost
exactly two years, from August 2021 until August
2023. And his successor was Kimar Hashemi. But
we need to talk about how that tenure ended.
Because this brings us back to the hook, that
dramatic crash we started with. We have to connect
those dots. We mentioned the crash happened on
February 23, 2023. Sejati was visiting Baft County.
And again, looking at the map, this highlights
the grunt work of the job. He wasn't just sitting
in Tehran in an office. He was out in the provinces.
Right. That physical risk is part of the job
description when you are inspecting facilities
in remote areas. When that helicopter went down,
it was a catastrophic failure. We mentioned the
deputy died. But Sejati. He suffered a brain
hemorrhage. A brain hemorrhage? I mean, that
is a life -altering injury. That's not a sprained
ankle on the track. It is incredibly serious.
And here's where the endurance theme comes back
with a vengeance. Most people, if they survive
a helicopter crash and suffer a brain bleed,
would retire immediately. They'd send in the
resignation letter right from the hospital bed.
I'm done. I survived. I'm going home. But Sojati
didn't leave office immediately. No. And this
is the part that really strikes me. The crash
was in February. He didn't resign until August
1st, 2023. That's nearly six months later. Roughly
five months, yes. He stayed on. Now, the sources
don't explicitly state that he resigned because
of the crash. But when you look at the severity
of such an accident, the physical toll. the psychological
trauma of losing a deputy sitting right next
to you in the proximity of the dates, it is a
very reasonable inference that the accident played
a major role in the end of his tenure. It really
paints a picture of a man who is wired to persist.
I mean, think about the steeplechase again. You
hit a barrier. You fall into the water. What
do you do? You don't walk off the track. You
get up wet and tired and you keep running. He
applied that exact same logic to a helicopter
crash. It's a testament to his conditioning,
not just physical, but mental. He spent his entire
life overriding the brain signal to stop. When
his legs burned in Atlanta in 1996, he overrode
it. When his political nomination failed years
ago, he overrode it. When the helicopter crashed,
he tried to override it. But eventually, even
the best athlete hits a wall they just can't
run through. Exactly. And his resignation in
August 2023 marked the end of that specific race.
It's a remarkable biography when you lay it all
out chronologically like that. Born in Tehran
on March 21st, 1969. He grows up to become an
Asian champion. He becomes a doctor of physiology.
He becomes a minister of sport. He survives a
devastating crash. It's a lot for one life. It
is a dense biography. Yeah. And what stands out
to me is that Sajjadi represents a rare experiment
in governance. We complain all the time that
politicians are disconnected from reality. But
here is a man who is deeply connected to the
reality of his field. You can't tell him, Mr.
Minister. You don't. know what it's like to train
for the olympics he's been there he has the receipts
he has the time sheets exactly he has the undeniable
credibility of practice but and this raises that
important question we touched on earlier does
that expertise always translate to success in
the political machinery just because you understand
the physiology of a runner does that mean you
can navigate the budget committees the public
pressure the media and the unpredictable disasters
That's the million -dollar question. Being a
great player doesn't always make you a great
coach, and being a great runner doesn't always
make you a great politician. But his background
certainly gave him a unique perspective that
most of his predecessors probably lacked. And
that perspective is valuable. He could look at
a blueprint for a new stadium or a training program
and understand the on -the -ground reality in
a way a career politician never could. He knows
that if the track surface is wrong, the shins
will fracture. He knows the granular details.
So as we wrap up this deep dive into the life
of Hamid Sajjadi, what are we left with? We have
the story of the sprinter statesman, a man defined
by the clock, by the hurdles, and by his ability
to keep getting back up. We are left with a portrait
of pure resilience. From the 3 ,000 -meter steeplechase,
which is essentially an obstacle course, to the
obstacle course of Iranian politics, and finally,
the literal survival of a disaster. It's a testament
to the human capacity to adapt and endure. And
I want to leave you listening today with a final
thought to mull over. Sejati spent his life mastering
the steeplechase. It's a race defined by rhythm,
by pacing, and by overcoming fixed visible barriers.
You can see the hurdle. You know it's coming.
You jump it. But politics, politics is rarely
that structured. Exactly. So the question is.
Does the rigid, ironclad discipline required
to clear physical hurdles help? Or does it actually
hinder someone when they face the unpredictable,
invisible obstacles of political administration?
Is the mindset of an Olympian truly compatible
with the compromise of a politician? That is
something worth thinking about. The track is
predictable. The world is not. And thanks for
diving in with us today. It's been a journey
through sports science and survival. We'll see
you on the next one.