Olympic Wrestling- Team USA

[devildog47959]

I been trying to keep up with results from USA wrestling, but thanks 4 all the updates guys! I hope we have better showing in women's & mens freestyle!

[maligned]

Justin "Harry" Lester got his draw and some luck finally fell on the USA's side.  He has a really good draw.

Yeah, I saw the same thing.  A first round bye and no Worlds top 4 finisher till the semi's. 

In Greco for us, other than Byers and Lester, I'm not sure if a good draw would have mattered much.  The weights are all so deep.  It's good one of the two top dogs has a shot to do something.

[maligned]

Day 3 Greco:

66kg: Justin Lester the lone remaining USA Greco chance. 

First round: bye
Second round: wins 3-0, 3-1 over Japan

Hungary or Germany next.  The German was 5th at worlds last year, but the Hungarians are very strong in Greco and he almost had the victory wrapped up as I typed this.

[maligned]

Lester up at 8:54am in the quarterfinals against a very tough Lorincz of Hungary.

For comparison from last year's world championships:

Georgia over Lester 4-0, 4-0
Georgia over Lorincz 1-0, 1-2, 2-0

Cuba over Lester 1-0, 1-0
Cuba over Lorincz 0-1, 1-0, 2-0

If Lester wins, he probably has the Georgian that handled him in the above-mentioned world semi-final match.

[maligned]

Lester loses a heart breaker 2-0, 0-1, 0-2.

He'll now hope the Hungarian can upset the Georgian before needing two very difficult victories for bronze.

[Y2CJ41]

Lester got pulled back in!  The Hungarian dominated 3-0, 4-0! 

[maligned]

Lester now needs two wins for a medal.  He'll have his repechage match against a German at 12:45pm.  If he wins, he'll come right back and wrestle the Georgian for Olympic bronze.  

The German was 5th at last year's worlds, losing tight matches to the world champ and bronze medalist.  He also lost 4-1, 1-0 to the Hungarian that put Lester into the repechage.

[MattM]

Lester falls 0-5 0-5 to the German in the first repechage match.  Definitely not the showing we had hoped for out of the Greco team.  Hopefully the Mens and Womens Freestyle team can add a little redemption to the US wrestling efforts.

Up Wednesday are the Women
48kg Clarissa Chun
63kg Elena Pirozhkov

[TripleB]

Definitely not the showing we had hoped for out of the Greco team.  Hopefully the Mens and Womens Freestyle team can add a little redemption to the US wrestling efforts.

Pssssssshhh much a do about nothing. It ain't Folkstyle, now is it? Folkstyle is 'Merican  and our way is the right way. We should just boycott the olympics until they let Folkstyle in.

[maligned]

Day 1 Women:

48kg: Clarissa Chun beats a Chinese and then loses in the round of 16 to an Azerbaijani.  The Azerbaijani won in the quarters and will be up in a few minutes against Ukraine in the Semi's.  If she wins, Chun is back in and would need to beat a Pole and the Ukrainian girl to medal.

63kg: Elena Pirozhkova got a bye and then lost to a Latvian in the round of 16.  The Latvian then lost in the quarters, so Pirozhkova (one of our brightest medal hopes) is gone with a whimper.

The hits keep coming.  We're now 6-10 with no medals through 8 weight classes unless something goes very right for Chun.

[maligned]

Chun is back in.  She'll need to beat the Polish and Ukrainian girls to medal.  All 3 girls lost both periods with very similar scores to the Azerbaijani who's going for gold.  Repechage starts at 12:45pm.

[Y2CJ41]

Chun gets the bronze! Glad to see some wrestling hardware coming back to the good ole USA!

[MattM]

The women finish up tomorrow with Campbell and Bernard

[maligned]

Chun gets the bronze! Glad to see some wrestling hardware coming back to the good ole USA!

Yeah, great day for Chun!  The biggest match, honestly, was probably the first round win over China.  She was last year's world bronze medalist, plus Chun even lost to China's #2 at the World Cup.  Huge win.  She then had a very manageable draw, as it turned out, for repechage advancement.

[maligned]

Day 2 Women:

55kg: Kelsey Campbell got a bye and then lost to the Japanese world champ 1-0, 1-0 in the second round.  Obviously, this means she has a great shot to get into the repechage.  Because of the byes on her side of the bracket, she'll only need one win to be in the bronze medal match if the Japanese brings her back in the draw.

72kg: Ali Bernard loses first round to a Swede 3-0, 3-1.  Ali beat her in a crazy, very competitive match at worlds last year on the way to bronze; but she's fighting injuries so this was a predictable result.  She's probably done because the Swede meets the dominant Bulgarian world champ next.

[maligned]

Bernard officially out.  Updated U.S. wrestlers overall with 10 weights in the books: 8-12 with one bronze medal.

Kelsey Campbell is still alive for bronze, as stated above.

[MattM]

Campbell fell short of making the bronze medal match in the repechage.

Up Friday 74kg Burroughs and 55kg Hazewinkle to start out the Men's Freestyle competition.

[Y2CJ41]

Varner's semi-final and finals matches will be on NBC at 3pm EST.

[MattM]

Varner come through the bracket as expected.  But added something extra and comes away with a suprise Gold.   Great win which helps the US wrestling system save a little face after its early Olympic results.

[1oldwrestler]

Varner come through the bracket as expected.  But added something extra and comes away with a suprise Gold.   Great win which helps the US wrestling system save a little face after its early Olympic results.

Think I read somewhere where U.S. had the most medals in this olympics in wrestling since '96.  I'd say we did more than save face, frankly.  Not sure what the U.S. wrestling community expects each year's international team to do.   Got news for you, wrestling is really hard and not glamorous enough to where kids are beating a path to do it.  Look at the countries that are good (old easten block countries), those folks live a hard existence so any outlet to better themselves they'll take it (also, in some of those countries, wrestling is more like a national sport).  Too many glamour sports in the U.S. that takes away from the sport of wrestling.  It's same reason we really aren't that good internationally in soccer.  Our best athletes play other sports, plain and simple. 

[MattM]

Think I read somewhere where U.S. had the most medals in this Olympics in wrestling since '96.  I'd say we did more than save face,

I'm glad we have some good hardware but I was pointing out the overall preformance of the entire team (Greco and Women included) not just the medal count.  Just look at the win/lose or even at the way some of the team wrestled their matches and it was clear that we didn't look our best overall.  From that standpoint it more clear Varner helped pull us up that extra bit we needed.  The Greco and Women's team didn't put us in a great starting spot and Freestyle help bring things back into balance some.   Without Varners performance we have the same medal count as 2008, but the other weights would have equaled out to a decently lower overall showing than last Olympics. 

[1oldwrestler]

Without Varners performance we have the same medal count as 2008, but the other weights would have equaled out to a decently lower overall showing than last Olympics. 

Not trying to be an a$$ but you really can't use that argument.  He DID have the performance he had, so we ultimately were way better than 2008 because of it.  Some guys rise to the occasion on the world's biggest stage and, thankfully, it was a guy from the good ol' U.S. of A.  I understand what you are saying but when you consider only 29 countries nabbed olympic medals in wrestling ( top 10 were Russia, Japan, Azerbaijan, U.S., Cuba, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Georgia and Armenia) and we were in the top 5, I'd say that's pretty impressive.  Look at the list of all the countries that won medals and it's pretty obvious we're swimming with some pretty bizarre company (only 3 western european countries won anything Sweden 2 medals, France 1 and Spain 1).  Just more proof that wrestling isn't what you'd call "mainstream."  Frankly, I love following a sport that isn't adored by the masses.  BTW, why no team from  Afghanistan?  I noticed they only sent 6 athletes to these games.  They typically perform well in Olympic wrestling.

[MattM]

  BTW, why no team from  Afghanistan?  I noticed they only sent 6 athletes to these games.  They typically perform well in Olympic wrestling.

Are you sure you are thinking Afghanistans.  They have not had more than a handful of competitors each Olympics since the Taliban came into power  and probably not major numbers pre-Taliban either.  I don't think they have had a wrestler compete In quite some time either.  I'm guessing the lack of government funding towards sports then and even now would be the main reasoning not many athletes go.  They did have a female competitor for the first time ever (first time every participating country had at least one)  Their Takwondo guys is the only one to ever medal in the games.

[maligned]

Are you sure you are thinking Afghanistans.  They have not had more than a handful of competitors each Olympics since the Taliban came into power  and probably not major numbers pre-Taliban either.  I don't think they have had a wrestler compete In quite some time either.  I'm guessing the lack of government funding towards sports then and even now would be the main reasoning not many athletes go.  They did have a female competitor for the first time ever (first time every participating country had at least one)  Their Takwondo guys is the only one to ever medal in the games.

You might be thinking of Azerbaijan.

[quinnsDAD]

good to hear Burroughs say he had another Olympics in him.