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The mats are rolled and whistles are ready to be blown for the first day of wrestling competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Team USA has a pair of wrestlers competing Monday, Adam Coon (130 kilograms, Greco-Roman) and Amit Elor (68 kilograms, Women’s Freestyle). They will have it tough from the first whistle, as both are set to face the No.1 seeds in their weight class.
In the first round, Elor will face 2023 Senior World champion Buse Cavusoglu of Turkey. Cavusoglu is a three-time Senior World medalist and won a U23 World title in 2018. Elor actually faced Cavusoglu at the 2022 World Championships, where Elor advanced by pin to the semifinals.
Coon will face Iran’s Amin Mirzazadeh, who took fifth at the 2020 Olympics in Japan and was a Senior World champion in 2023 and silver medalist in 2022.
The preliminaries and quarterfinals will be wrestled from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. (CT), followed by the semifinals from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. (CT) this afternoon. The Men’s Greco-Roman 60 kilogram class will also compete on Monday morning and afternoon, but Team USA did not secure a qualifier for the class. Repechage and medal matches for Coon and Elor will be Tuesday.
Action will get rolling on Peacock and will be shown later in the day on USA Network at 4 p.m. CT, but get to know Team USA’s two wrestlers before they take the mat this morning and stick with us for live updates and analysis throughout the day.
Who is Amit Elor?
Elor is the 68-kilogram freestyle representative for Team USA. The 20-year-old is one of the sports’ young phenoms as a two-time Senior World champion and the youngest American to ever win a World title, doing so in 2022 at 18-years old. In her career, she has won a Cadet World title, three Junior World titles and two U23 World titles along with her two Senior World titles.
Elor’s ascension has been nothing short of rapid but has also been one of trials and tribulations. USA Today’s Tom Schad profiled Elor’s journey ahead of the Olympics, which you can read here.
Elor will have that that from the first match against Cavusoglu, but things lighten up from there for her on day one should she advance. In the quarterfinals, Elor would face the winer of Poland’s Wiktoria Choluj or China’s Feng Zhou. Choluj is a two-time World Medalist, but hasn’t done so since her Bronze in 2018. Zhou, the No. 8 seed, is now a three-time Olympian and won a Bronze Senior World Medal in 2018.
Her top two most likely opponents then in the semifinals would be No. 4 seed Irina Ringaci of Moldova and No. 5 seed Tetiana Sova Rizhko of Ukraine. Ringaci is a multi-time age group World Medalist, including a U23 World title in 2023 and a Junior World title in 2021. However, she also has won a Senior World title (2021) and has taken bronze in the previous two cycles. Rizhko has wrestled at just one Senior World Championship and did not medal.
If Elor gets through the first round, the path to the gold medal final is very much in sight.
Who is Adam Coon?
Coon is the Greco-Roman 130-kilogram representative for Team USA. College wrestling fans may remember the name, as a three-time NCAA All-American and two-time NCAA finalist at heavyweight for Michigan from 2013-2018. Internationally, Coon was a Senior World silver medalist in 2018 and earned three more age-level World medals before that.
Coon was a four-time high school state champion in Michigan as well as being a high-profile football player at linebacker and offensive line for Fowlerville High School. Despite never playing football for the University of Michigan, he was signed by the Tennessee Titans in 2021, but returned to wrestling and made the Olympic team this cycle at 29 years old.
If Coon gets past the No. 1 seeded Mirzazadeh, it doesn’t get any easier from there. His next opponent would likely be Cuba’s Mijain Lopez, a four-time Olympic gold medalist. At 42-years old, winning a fifth Olympic gold would be the first time a summer Olympic athlete has done so and just the second Olympic athlete ever alongside with Netherlands speed skater Ireen Wüst.
If Coon can overcome all of that, his semifinal opponent would likely be either No. 4 seed Alin Alexuc-Ciurariu of Romania, No. 5 seed Heiki Nabi of Estonia or unseeded Sabah Shariati of Azerbaijan. Ciurariu is in his third-consecutive Olympics, but has never finished higher than fifth. Habi is back in the Olympics for the first time since 2016 as a three-time Senior World medalist and Shariati was an Olympic bronze medalist in 2016 in Rio.
Coon could not have had a tougher draw if you tried, to say the least.
Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at Emckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23
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Publish date : 2024-08-05 01:27:00
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