maligned

You might be right that that's part of it. Their age-group performances are stronger than their senior performances. But their age-group performances have been gradually stronger since at least 2018. They've never done anything resembling the destruction they unleashed at U17s this year. I just mean, even if we sent our best 18 year olds instead of our best 16 year olds, would we win 8 of 10 medals and 5 golds? They're doing something right.

I don't know if anybody else noticed, but India's women will be a wrestling superpower going forward--clearly battling for top 2 or 3 and possibly battling Japan for team golds. They destroyed everyone at U17s, and they're in a nip-and-tuck battle with Japan for the U20 title today heading into the medal matches. U20: First after Day 1 of women's with 3 medals and 5 top 10s. Wrestling for 4 more medals and they're all Top 10 today. Again, it will be super tight between them and Japan for the team title. The U.S. will end up 3rd or 4th. At U17s, India took 8 medals--including 5 golds . They obviously ran away with the team title, far outdistancing Japan in 2nd. We were 5th at that event.

Small correction here: 11 guys finished in the Top 10 from the 20 Greco weights at U17s and U20s. And we got 2 medals at U17s and 3 medals at U20s. We got 8th as a team at U17s, and I'm guessing we'll land 6th or 7th in U20s after today's finals.

All of our U20 Greco athletes are eliminated for tomorrow, so we can start to evaluate: We ended up with 5 medals and 12 Top 10s from 20 weight classes at U17s and U20s. We had only 2, 3, and 1 on the podium from all 20 weights the last 3 years, and we had only 6 Top 10s as recently as 2021. (And, yes, Russia and Belarus were at these events in 2024 at the U17 and U20 level.) Are we finally seeing small Greco development improvements--or is this just luck or specific to a few certain athletes?

One theory could be that winning medals indicates a level of "seriousness", and perhaps in-country popularity of a given style. And the fact that a given style's medals are won by higher population nations could be construed as one statistical indicator of overall global popularity. Median population (not mean) of Olympic medal-winning nations by style: Women's freestyle: 125 million Men's freestyle: 65 million Greco: 19.5 million Average/mean population per medal would skew even much more strongly toward freestyle.

Sorry, Ukraine passed us at the last weight. We ended up 5th with our 6 entries.

I'm not sure there's a better metric out there. Wrestling is more than a second-class or niche sport in only a few nations on earth. In most nations it's like here--you watch wrestling or follow wrestling if you wrestled or are generally in the wrestling community. So if slightly more nations participate at the highest level in Greco, it's hard to argue by some other non-existent metric of attendance or participation that Greco isn't slightly more popular.

So I actually wasn't paying close enough attention. India ran away with the Women's team title here. They're about to pick up their 5th gold and 8th total medal. Does this mean something?? Japan is clearly 2nd. We end up 4th with only 6 ladies participating. Our 6 end up with a gold, a bronze, and a 5th. The other 3 were all tough-luck losers to the bronze medalist in the gold medalist bracket-half (meaning they may have been the 3rd best overall in their weights, but they got bad draws). Taina Fernandez at 61kg/134lb got a tech and 3 falls for our gold medal. Killer.

The Japanese teched all of her opponents other than Morgan in 28 to 45 seconds. Morgan scoring on her and lasting 1:52 made her the clear second best in the weight class. At the U17 level there could occasionally be some extreme dominance, but this is another level. No one at this tournament came close to that level of dominance. And at age 15? Yikes. Japan keeps rolling.

Many top Crossfit athletes are ex-gymnasts. Their ability to move, spatial awareness, mobility, and speed/power convert so well to learning the Olympic lifts and other movements and becoming super strong and super fit by Crossfit standards. Zero doubt they'd do the same in wrestling.

FYI: Wrestling has the 3rd most medals of any sport, behind only swimming and track. It will continue to be an uphill climb to get more.

He obviously wouldn't have been training for Paris at this point anyway.

He earned the spot at the Euro qualifier. He appears to be out.

There is nothing in the IOC release (https://olympics.com/ioc/paris-2024-individual-neutral-athletes), nor in the UWW release (https://uww.org/article/ioc-announces-first-ains-2024-paris-olympics-16-wrestlers-eligible) that suggests that any more AINs will be added. And the permitted athletes listed are very specific and don't seem as if they can be replaced. Quotas earned by other AINs not ruled eligible by the IOC will be awarded to other NOCs (other nations), according to the verbiage in both releases. I don't understand where the information is coming from that suggests more athletes of this nature may be approved later? Past UWW protocols for replacing disqualified athletes would have meant taking the athlete that would have earned the disqualified athlete's place had they forfeited their matches. I don't know how they can determine those spots this time around, though, because there were no bronze medal matches at the continental qualifiers to determine "next-in-line". In Sidakov's case, Bayramov of Azerbaijan would be next-in-line from Worlds, but he earned the spot at Euros and next-in-line there can't be determined because he beat multiple people that never wrestled off for bronze. At 97, Zhabrailov also beat 3 different guys to earn the spot, and those 3 guys never wrestled each other to determine next-in-line either. Maybe they planned to automatically take 4th place from the world qualifiers, no matter what, in the case of drugs or other eligibility issues like this.

A couple of matches at the Albanian senior event this past weekend that caught my eye: #5 (at 57kg) Abakarov of Albania was up at 65kg and beat Okorokov, who will represent Australia at the Olympics, 3-2, in the final. Okorokov used to be a 57kg like Abakarov. I'm guessing Zain wouldn't have big problems with Okorokov, but he's a real opponent, unlike some qualifying out of the Africa/Oceania path. New Albanian Olympian, Chermen Valiev, struggled a bit, 6-4, with the Moldovan, Diacon, who hasn't done much at the senior level. Valiev's results continue to be "enough," but not on a Sidakov or Dake level, I don't think.

Having lived in France for a while and knowing the culture of it, I'm fine with it for a France-hosted Olympics as a nod to the local culture. It's just another way of showing incredible athleticism through choreographed movements according to specific judging standards--no different from gymnastics, figure skating, bmx street, snowboard halfpipe, etc. It's just one we haven't been exposed to as a bona fide sport.

Definitely non-Olympic ONLY this year in October. Four weights for all three styles. And this definitely only happened once before--in 2016. In 2020 there was obviously nothing--neither Olympics nor Worlds--so in 2021 they did both the Olympics plus a 10-weight Worlds to make up for it. Before 2016, there were always 7+ weights in freestyle and Greco at the Olympics, so nothing like this was deemed necessary.

In 2016, I think they used the Farrell as a "qualifier" for the non-Olympic WTTs. Not sure what they'll do to decide who can compete this time. Nothing's published, which is odd when they've known far in advance this event will happen. Just a guess...Olympic reps not eligible, obviously; anyone who wrestled OTTs is eligible; and they hold a last-chance qualifier to hand out 3 to 5 more bids per weight. Whatever the case, they did 2 days last time for the WTTs: Day 1 Challenge Tournament and Day 2 Best-of-3 Finals. I'm guessing all normal procedures would apply. Vito and Zahid would advance to the Finals--and DT gets a bye to the Challenge semi's at 79 or 92

FWIW, at the U20 event where those 3 matches are from, Bouzakis teched the Macedonian that pinned Sakamoto. Bouzakis took bronze and the Macedonian was 5th.

To add to the above info: Israel hasn't had a male wrestler at the Olympics since 3 greco athletes in 2000 and 2004. In 2000, they didn't qualify athletes in the same weights. In 2004, they both took second in close losses in their pools or they would have faced each other in Greco 84kg. No way to know if the Iranian took his pool loss on purpose.

I think there are only 4 of these boycott wrestling forfeitures on record and none at the Olympics. Iran's sporting leadership received a firm reprimand by the IOC chairman in 2019 that any continued forfeitures would result in a banning of Iran from all sports at the Olympics. Iranian media based outside Iran reported in the lead-up to the 2020/21 Games that Iran's internal adjusted plan was simply not to send any athlete that had an Israeli in their group or bracket in whichever sport, "even if it's Hassan Yazdani." No forfeits or protest non-appearances happened at the Games, but the policy obviously continued with the little Yazdani forfeiture to Finesilver in 2022. Israel didn't manage to qualify any wrestlers for the 2024 Games.

Olympic wrestling schedule: August 5: Coon & Elor, early rounds August 6: Coon & Elor, repechage and medals Rau & Hildebrandt, early rounds August 7: Rau & Hildebrandt, repechage and medals Jacobson & Parrish, early rounds August 8: Jacobson & Parrish, repechage and medals Lee, Brooks, Maroulis, early rounds August 9: Lee, Brooks, Maroulis, repechage and medals (3 golds today?!?) Dake, Parris, Miracle, early rounds August 10: Dake, Parris, Miracle, repechage and medals Retherford, Snyder, Blades, early rounds August 11: Retherford, Snyder, Blades, repechage and medals

People are acting like Sadulaev is probably going. What haven't I heard? Or is it just assumptions of what Russian power/money will cause to happen?

All very valid points. "International senior-level" inexperience is what I meant for Lee. I think it's possible he'll face a few more dangerous style/athleticism learning moments like the Zou 4-pointer. Guys like Micic and Gilman have gotten those out of their system and will rarely be caught off guard like that.

I'd take about 5-10 percentage points off of 57 (because of inexperience and struggles on defense against the ultra-fast guys), about 25 off of 65 (because of a loaded, loaded field with athletic types like Ochir that are Zain's kryptonite), and 10 off of 97 (because of bracketing). That would leave us at about 4.55 or 4.6. And I've said I think 4.5 would probably be a Vegas over/under for our medals. Snyder's bracketing situation is a little concerning. He and Tazhudinov will be separated, but the savvy Zhabrailov and Azarpira (who is young and rising and just beat Snyder recently) will be randomly drawn in because of lack of ranking points. That means there's a 23% chance he'll have both of those guys plus Magomedov on his side and a 77% chance he'll have at least one of them plus Magomedov. Because of that, the landmines are enough that I'd put his medal chances overall at 90% instead of 99%.