Thomas Gilman advanced to the gold-meal match at 57 kilograms (Photo/Mark Lundy, Lutte-Lens.com)PARIS -- Day 5 of the World Wrestling Championships in Paris and the opening day of the freestyle wrestling competition brought about high anticipation from the American team. There was great anticipation of how many medals this talented team could win.
When the dust settled after Friday's first session, USA advanced three out of four wrestlers to medal matches. Thomas Gilman (57 kilograms) is going for a gold medal, while J'den Cox (86 kilograms) and Nick Gwiazdowski (125 kilograms) chase bronze medals.
Gilman reached the gold-medal match by edging Hak Jin-Jong of North Korea 5-4 in a match that went down to the wire.
In the quarterfinals, Gilman dominated, using a series of low singles and gut wrench turns to defeat Nodir Safarov of Uzbekistan 12-1.
He opened with a 5-2 win over Andrey Yatsenko of Ukraine, and followed it up with a 3-0 win over Reza Atrinagharchi of Iran, which proved to be more of a chanting battle between the American fans and fans for Iran, as chants of "USA, USA, USA" and "IRAN, IRAN, IRAN," echoed throughout the arena.
Gilman led the entire match against the Iranian, scoring on a pushout and shot clock violation. But it was the takedown awarded at the buzzer by the referee for Iran that got the crowd more involved. A takedown would have given Atrinagharchi a victory on criteria. But the judges overturned the call ruling no takedown and Gilman a 3-0 victor.
Gilman, who is inspired by his grandfather for this competition, said things are in his favor.
"I think this format favors me," Gilman said. "That was a big match (the semis) for me, my grandfather. I came here to win it."
J'den Cox, an Olympic bronze medalist in Rio, reached the semifinals before losing to Boris Makoev of Slovakia. Cox fell behind 6-0 and was unable to come back. He cut the deficit to 6-3, which is how the match would end. His quarterfinal victory came over Zbigniew Baranowski of Poland, 3-2.
Cox started his day with two come-from-behind victories. The first a 6-1 victory over Ahmed Dudarov of Germany. After trailing 1-0 at the break, Cox came out with three takedowns set the final score.
It was Cox's second match that had the Americans holding their breath. Facing Ville Heino of Finland, who wrestles for Campbell University, , Cox found himself in an early 6-0 deficit before hitting a beautiful four-point move to cut the score to 6-4 heading into the break. He shot moments after the whistle to begin period two, tying the score with a double leg. Another takedown and a force out made the final score 9-6, followed by a flex and yell of excitement from Cox.
He will wrestle Mihail Ganev (Bulgaria) for bronze.
Nick Gwiazdowski won three matches in Friday's first session (Photo/Mark Lundy, Lutte-Lens.com)Nick Gwiazdowski (125 kilograms) started his day on fire. He won 10-0 over Andrei Romanov of Moldova. He then beat Daniel Ligeti of Hungary 10-1. The quarterfinal bout was closer for the American. He jumped out to a 5-0 lead on Iran's Yadolla Mohebi and held on for a 5-4 victory.
In the semifinals, Gwiazdowski ran into Olympic champ and two-time world champion Taha Akgul of Turkey and was outmatched, losing 10-0.
He faces Natsagsuren Zolboo (Mongolia) in the bronze-medal match.
USA suffered an early setback when Logan Stieber lost to Gadzhimurad Rashidov of Russia 11-0 in the round of 16. Rashidov is a European champion wrestling for world wrestling power Russia, so it was expected that Stieber, a 2016 world champion, would be in for a tough bout. But few could have predicted the final score of the bout.
Stieber, known for his offensive attacks, was unable to get his offense going.
When Rashidov reached the finals, Stieber received a repechage match.
In his first repachage match, he beat Molnar of Hungary 10-0. Stieber was able to get his offensive attacks going with a few takedowns and turns.
He would face world and Olympic champion Vladimir Khinchegashvilli of Georgia in his next repechage match. Khinchegashvilli used his technique and strength to overpower Stieber to the tune of 10-0 shortly after the break.
An obviously upset, Stieber said after the match he expected the weight class to be tough coming in.
"It's disappointing, obviously," said Stieber. "I wanted to win a medal with my teammates. "The bracket was pretty stacked. I figured it would be tough, but not Russia, Georgia back-to-back."
Tonight's finals start at 7 p.m. local time, 1 p.m. ET.
Recommended Comments
There are no comments to display.
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now