GrandOlm

Not a single Bulgarian medalist at u20s, the hosts. And commentators were annoyed that the Bulgarian wrestling federation was making so much noice and threats (which turned out to be empty anyways).

Well when you have a system that funnels people who aren't the pinnacle of the main track into something, what to expect? Add to them being usually well undertrained in the style compared to their competitors. Greco is far from optimized by the rest of the world, but other countries have figured out that at least by 15 you get them training full time. Other countries who are good at multiples styles often geographically separate them. It helps ameliorate the "jack of all trades master of none" and "Team A style Team B style" problems.

It's interesting to me how much volatility there has been in Greco Roman wrestling. If this tournament had existed in the 1920-40s, there would have been a lot of Swedish, Finnish, and German medalists. From the 50-80s Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland would have medaled a lot. Now these countries are either completely irrelevant or third rate at best. Iran and Azerbaijan have slotted in as the new stand outs.

Wrestling is just not popular anywhere in the world, with a few notable exceptions (Iran). And even where it does have some foothold, it's usually an inward facing participant only sport. It also doesn't help that many events are hosted in countries with low interest, low participation, and poor results.

Because high schools have folk style and not freestyle teams. It's that simple I don't agree with that line of thinking. Short distance races, wrestling, chariot racing, jousting, horse racing, baseball, have at certain points in history been the most popular and culturally needle moving sports in various civilizations. A lot of sports on that list are now either gone or niche. We happen to live in a time when team based ball sports are most popular.

I think these wrestlers are primarily getting developed at youth clubs. But yeah, a lot of world level wrestlers in the US are opening these clubs/academies and living off them as small business owners. And they get these kids young often, like 5 years old young.

I kind of figured. The Flo guys kept on making pilot jokes. That is a boring 9-5 life.

They are in their very late 20s/early 30s. I think your early 30s are still prime, especially at this heavy of a weight class. I think mid 30s can still be prime for 125/130 kg.

I think the only reason Freestyle got included in the Olympics originally was to appeal to Americans. It just happened so long ago that the styles slightly diverged again. Like before WW2, the European wrestlers were all greco roman style and they'd double enter the Freestyle events (kind of like Fargo wrestlers do). These double entrants ended up medaling a lot because the US wasn't sending committed people and there weren't specialists around to stop them. That wikipedia page lists folk styles from England, Ireland, and Italy..... Those wrestling traditions are long dead. They might be getting the HEMA treatment by a couple "eccentrics" but these are not competitive sports.

He's probably still getting over losing at the olympics. Silver and bronze back to back is brutal. He should have one more chance, but after that it's too late.

I think the Neal example is turning into the Neal exception. The NFL is not a skill sport, so it does have this small window for a couple of special individuals. But there are still specific and rare physical attributes that you need to succeed, and just being world medalist level heavyweight wrestler isn't nearly enough. I also think that some of these wrestlers are realizing that the non sports world of jobs isn't all that exciting or glamourous. I'm curious how Wyatt will pan out. Military pilot (or daresay even fighter pilot) might be one of the few non entertainment careers that can compete with freestyle wrestler.

I agree with you overall. But Masoumi has to make a decision for the here and now. I think he chose AZE since they're the top mercenary team. So the money and just the set up that they have ready for wrestlers is the best. I didn't buy that he was going to Armenia. AZE are actually smart how they focus on Greco for the natives (the easier style to get good at as a nation) and leave the other style for foreigners. It's like a win win for them. Not to derail the thread, it is interesting how a Shia nation is on bad terms with one of the few majority Shia (albeit secular) countries.

It may or may not work out, but how is it an awful idea for sure? Igor Rosotorotsky was the second best wrestler on the planet when he was a young man. He should have been at minimum a 2 or 3 time Olympic medalist with many World and European medals. But because of wrestling's unfair ways of selecting athletes to compete and the lack of transferring in his era, he was denied a full career (retired at 26). Now he's just a foot note, a trivia question about someone else's career. I wish transferring was a thing back in the 80s and 90s. I think Igor would have been part of many special moments. Other sports don't do this. They let people compete from more than one country if they're that good. Why do wrestlers have to sacrifice themselves for seemingly these arbitrarily designed processes (when there is an obvious out). You're only young once and time goes quickly. If you want to have a wrestling career and you can go somewhere where you can qualify, what's the downside exactly? Unless Masoumi is angling to be a politician in Iran after he retires? But you still need to have a good career even for that to happen. Well Ali Arslan is not a 2 meter tall super heavyweight, I don't know why he transfered. Masoumi can't chop his leg off and make 97 to help Iran. So he's either not on the team or he beats Zare (or whoever else comes up). Either way, a really good wrestler is not contributing (besides other countries not having them). It's not just about beating Zare. There's more to wrestling than beating one opponent. What if Zare is just a bad match up for him? What if someone else can beats Zare for him in a tournament? Masoumi can never beat Zare again and win an Olympic, it's not that far fetched. Plus he can win silver and bronze medals at all the biggest tournaments even if Zare stops him every time. He has the option of trying to beat Zare or aging him out. But Zare is only 24. Are you going to wait 10 years for a guy you're only 3 years the junior of. And you won't be getting that time back. Personally, I'd just be proud that my nation produced a great athlete like that. I'd be mad at the dumb rules that forced his hand to transfer and cheer for them anyways.

I meant more so in the aggregate and for the creme de la creme, not in absolute terms. I was thinking about the eastern origin wrestler who medaled at 57 kg while writing the original comment. The situation in Russia is that slavic Russians (the majority of the nation) have no footprint in wrestling (freestyle). Is it that truncated in Iran? There are ethnic Persian wrestlers, right?

What do you mean by that? Did something major happen at Russian Nationals. I thought it was the same old provinces winning when I skimmed the results. Aren't almost all their top wrestlers still from Dagestan and Ossetia?

But that logic runs into problems since Sadulaev destroyed Taylor, the same Taylor who owned the rivalry against Yazdani. Saduleav is really strong and has excellent balance, body movement instincts. I see him figuring out Yazdani, especially this older and injured version. I think Yazdani is going to find 97kg a wake up call compared to what him and Taylor feasted on for years at 86 kg. He's going to have to beat people like Snyder when before it was rolling up Deepak and Amine to get your guaranteed silver/bronze.

I remember looking at Amos' run, how he was just beating these Greco opponents with toughness and athleticism. Then that Russian wrestlers who had some actual technique (and enough strength to not get overwhelmed) put it on him. Amos is in his mid 20s now and I don't think he's developmentally any closer to the peers of his age cohort today than 2021.

You never really know for sure, until they start beating senior world medalists. Look at Amos. Double medaled at juniors and struggled with his college career. Internationally is a punching bag for the top Greco wrestlers whenever he makes a world team. I don't even know if that Russian greco wrestler (who beat Amos in his junior medal run) is even involved with the sport anymore. Haven't seen him anywhere either.

Well, wrestling is mostly a parent-participant sport in the US. If interest goes any further than that, it ends at rooting for the college alma mater. Funny you mention Iranians, they're one of the few (or the only???) countries in the world with mass appeal fandom for wrestling. Like if there's a lively crowd at Worlds, 90%+ of the time it's Iranians in the stands. Everywhere else the wrestling world is a small and insular community. You might be the local town hero, but the regular denizens of St Petersburg or Tokyo have never wrestled and don't follow the sport at all. If you win an Olympic medal, you might participate in a ceremony and get a picture with a politician. That's about the extent of your national appeal.

Given the amount of participants, money, quality youth clubs training kids from very young ages, and wrestling infrastructure that the US has compared the rest of the world, you'd expect Americans to dominate wrestling the way China does in ping pong. But they don't. Somehow a plucky little tag team of Dagestan+Ossetia and Mazandaran are able to match them. I think it's thanks to Folk style that we have the current rough parity at the top. There is this misconception that wrestling outside of America works the same way as in America, just on mini scale. In a lot of what would be considered the Tier 2 nations, the entire wrestling scene is a club or two in the capital plus one other big city and maybe one military run program. That's it.

Well you're wrong because I was on a swim team in my youth for about 3 years. Not that it really matters because you couldn't bother to figure out that olympians have been winning multiple medals in the different styles for years.

I think speed walking is ridiculous. No defense from me there. But it doesn't get one iota the attention that swimmers do. Well hurdles are a different skill set. It's not a suboptimal way of racing like the swimming styles are. It's adding jumping obstacles. Which I'd argue isn't that contrived (ever run and have tree branches, puddles, or rocks in the way). It also looks like specialists are the ones winning hurdles. So it's not like swimming, where it's another medal for Phelps and friends to pick up. High jump isn't a race, ditto long jump. It just gets grouped with track because it occurs outside and is individual. How far or high a person can jump is so universal and true to the appreciation of human athletic excellence that it absolutely belongs in the games. The ancients had myths of their amazing heroes that could out jump farther and higher than all their peers. Pole vault is almost a gymnastics event. It's niche and definitely specialized, has been around forever. It gets grouped with track and field, but it isn't that closely related to the races. I think steeple is outdated. It's apparent origins are in fox hunting? But again like speed walking, they don't get the attention that swimmers do. Swimmers collect medals like baseball cards. It's clear that the styles and distances either aren't unique enough to require enough specialization (in which case just make it all freestyle) or the swimming talent pool is too low to properly delineate the stroke styles among competitors. It's always some swimmers with boatloads of medals, this doesn't happen in track or other sports.

There could easily be a world though where the only type of event is "freestyle" (use whatever technique you want to get from a to b fastest) with a sprint, middle distance, and something long for 3 events. Perfectly logical. It just so happens that in our timelines, that's not the case. If track were like swimming, you could have hop on one leg, hop on two legs, skipping, backwards running, side running, spinning races. That's the kingmaker position swimming has found itself in.

I did here a comment about how wrestling fans need to get over being interested in more than #1 v #2. That's a problem almost every individual sport has. Team sports in theory represent more than the individual, as in a school, neighborhood, village/town/city, region, or nation (yes that's a farce a lot of the time with these differently colored logos pulling and trading among the same pool of vagrant athletes, but the pretense is still there). So yeah people will watch even if it's not the best of the best, because they gave the something else in common. A big part of college wrestling's appeal, over generic senior level freestyle, is the shared identify of going to the same school.

It's also the sport that, for whatever reason, gets their athletes turned into national heroes. Even if swimming is almost as niche as wrestling. The French went gaga over that swimmer at the last Olympics. Phelps became a household name. Maybe it is because they offer 500 potential medals for every swimmer to win at the games. 50 meter fly, 100 fly, 120 fly, backstroke, front stroke, relay, team, individual, mixed.