The moment Iowa Hawkeye wrestling fans have been waiting for has arrived. Spencer Lee is wrestling in Paris. Lee is representing Team USA in France, the home country of his mother, Cathy Lee. After sustaining injuries during the latter part of his historic collegiate career that included three NCAA titles and two Dan Hodge Trophies (college wrestling's equivalent to the Heisman Trophy), Lee has returned better than ever by sweeping Senior Nationals, the Pan-American Championships, the US Olympic Trials and the Last Chance Olympic qualifier to get here. It took a lot of hard work in the wrestling room, the rehab for his torn ACLs and a sabbatical in Japan to get ready, but Lee is here to recognize a childhood dream and live out the dreams his parents once had as Olympic hopefuls. Thus far, he's done a pretty good job of that, securing at least a silver medal by reaching Friday's gold medal match at 57 kilograms. Read below how he accomplished the feat and see how other fellow Americans and international wrestlers did in Paris on Thursday:
It took some time with reviews and such, but Lee's actual match time was short on his way to at least an Olympic silver medal. Against Uzbekistan's Gulomjon Abdullaev, Lee rattled off 14 points on three takedowns and eight points via gut wrenches. While he conceded a takedown and exposure on a wild freestyle sequence near the edge of the mat, Lee was the primary aggressor and offensive wrestler in this one and dominated Abdullaev for a 14-4 technical fall in the first period. He is the 11th Hawkeye to earn an Olympic medal. Five Hawkeyes have won gold, and Barry Davis is the lone Hawkeye to win silver.
Lee will face Japan's Rei Higuchi in the gold medal match Friday. Higuchi also won by technical fall against India's Aman Aman in the first period. Neither has been truly challenged by their opponents thus far, and it should be one of the better matches of the tournament.
Following Lee's dominance, Brooks and Maroulis fell short of following that up for Team USA. Leading 3-2 with under 10 seconds to go, Brooks looked poised to advance to the gold medal match. However, Bulgaria's Magomed Eeldaroviitch Ramazanov fought to the bitter end securing a takedown as the clock expired to win a stunning 4-3 match over the four-time NCAA Champion from Penn State. Maroulis took an early 2-0 lead on Japan's Tsugumi Sakurai, a three-time world champion the past three cycles, via a takedown but Sakurai rallied for a 10-4 victory over the Olympic gold medalist. Not only a huge loss for Maroulis, but also for Team USA's efforts in securing more medals than the mighty Japan wimen's freestyle team that has dominated the circuit since its creation. Both will have a chance to wrestle for bronze tomorrow, needing to win two matches to reach the podium.
This established the finals for the men's freestyle 86-kilogram and women's freestyle 57-kilogram weight classes as:
Men's Freestyle 86 kg Gold Medal Match
Women's Freestyle 57 kg Gold Medal Match
Nobody from Team USA made the medal matches for the women's freestyle 50 kilogram class or the men's Greco-Roman 67 kilogram and 87 kilogram weight classes. However, still some notable results here as Japan's women added some more hardware on the women's side to match Team USA's efforts thus far. As of now, Team USA has two gold medals, compared to a gold medal for Akari Fujinami, at least a silver for Tsugumi Sakurai and a pair of bronze medals for Japan.
Women's Freestyle 53 kg
Men's Greco-Roman 67 kg
Men's Greco-Roman 87 kg
Men's Freestyle 57 kg
Men's Freestyle 86 kg
Women's Freestyle 57 kg
Kyrgyzstan's Bekzat Almaz Uulu got a fast takedown to lead 2-0, but that's about all he would get. Lee flashed a variety of offense to lock up a 12-2 technical fall, first with a double-leg takedown and leg lace, then a single-leg takedown and leg lace, followed by a go-around takedown and gut wrench. His par terre offense was really on display here after he was unable to have many opportunities in his first match. That and a determined, fierce look following being taken down that even was noticeable for a guy like Lee who normally has that demeanor on the mat. Lee advances to the semifinals, which begin at 11:15 CT on Thursday. He'll face Uzbekistan's Gulomjon Abdullaev, a former Tokyo Olympian who finished seventh that cycle. Abdullaev's only world or olympic medal comes at the junior level in 2016 with a bronze.
As of now, Lee has wrestled like a guy who could and should win gold as he was expected. He's been calculated, yet aggressive. Fast paced and loose without being careless. However, his top competitor on paper, Japan's Rei Higuchi, has been stout as well. He defeated Iran's Alireza Sarlak 5-0 in the first round, followed by a 12-2 thrashing of Puerto Rico's Darian Cruz, a former NCAA champion with Lehigh. Lee's looked great, but that potential matchup is continuously looking like the main obstacle in Lee's path for gold should he advance in the semifinal. Before that though he's got Abdullaev, who he can't look past but has taken technical fall losses to Thomas Gilman (Tokyo Olympics) and Daton Fix (junior world championships) in the past for reference.
Three freestyle wrestlers have gotten their start for Team USA today. Between Brooks, Maroulis and Lee, they are 6-0 and onto the finals. At a minimum, they will compete for bronze at this point in the repechage should they lose this afternoon in their semifinal matches as a result.
Brooks secured a 11-1 technical fall over Japan's Hayato Ishiguro. It was a revenge match for Brooks, who lost to Ishiguro in the 2018 Junior World final at the buzzer. This time, however, Brooks dominated with the technical fall with 13 seconds remaining in the match. Maroulis took on Ukraine's Alina Hrushyna Akobiia, a U23 world champion and bronze senior world medalist. She had a bit more of a fight than Lee or Brooks, but pulled out a 7-4 win over the Ukrainian. With a win in the semifinals, the former Olympic gold medal winner will have guaranteed another medal for Team USA's women's freestyle team.
Lots of college wrestling flavor here with Spencer Lee, Darian Cruz, Aaron Brooks and Myles Amine all reaching the quarterfinals thus far.
Men's Freestyle 53 kg
Men's Freestyle 86 kg
Women's Freestyle 57 kg
Lee got the loudest chants and cheers of an opening match thus far at the Olympics, with chants of "USA! USA USA!" as he walked his way onto the mat. Two minutes into the match, Lee got his first takedown on a single-leg shot and nearly a leg lace before Zou worked his way off the mat for just a push-out point, giving Lee a 3-0 lead after the first period. From there, Lee remained an aggressor, nearly locking up a cradle for a moment and in on a couple single legs. However, he remained steady at three points and conceded two push-outs as time expired to hold on to win his first-ever Olympic match by a 3-2 scoreline. Bekzat Almaz Uulu of Kyrgyzstan will be his next opponent, a U23 world bronze medalist and fifth-place winner at the 2023 Senior world championships.
Up 2-0 early in the second period, Maroulis locked up a single-leg takedown and a leg lace nice enough it drew "Ooohs!" from the crowd in Paris. Leading 6-0, she held on from there to take a 7-2 win over India's Anshu Malik to reach the quarterfinal. The former Olympic gold medalist is off to a great start in Paris.
After conceding a push-out and being placed on the shot clock against Kazakhstan's Azamat Dauletbekov, a two-time world bronze medalist, Brooks scored a takedown to avoid being penalized for passivity and took a 2-1 lead. 30 seconds into the second period, Brooks single-leg takedown sealed the match, having the Penn State star adavance to the quarterfinals by a 4-3 scoreline.
It would have ben hard for Team USA's women's freestyle to keep up this pace they had been for an entire week, and that's sort of what happened between Parrish and Mongolia's Khulan Batkhuyag Parrish got on the board first with a body-lock takedown, followed by a pair of push-outs, but Batkhuyag countered with a similar sequence before working on a single-leg takedown and taking a 6-4 lead after the first period. That was followed by a pair of takedowns in the second from the Mongolian, who worked the last one in to a win by fall with 1:25 left. Parrish, a former world champion, finishes her tournament 0-2 having faced one of pan's bests wrestlers in round one and a world silver medalist in the repechage.
Bronze medal matches have been set in Parrish division, as well as the Greco-Roman 67 and 87 kilogram weight classes
Women's Freestyle 53 kg
Men's Greco-Roman 67 kg
Men's Greco-Roman 87 kg
Lee, a cadet and two-time junior world champion, will have a familiar face in his first matchup in China's Wanhao Zou. Lee wrestled Zou at the Last Chance Olympic qualifier and trailed 6-0 after a four-point takedown and leg lace early, but rallied for a 10-6 lead before the end of the first period. He concluded with a 10-9 win, but Zao is a calculated, strong and large wrestler who will be a threat right away. Should Lee win, he would have the winner of Kazakhstan's Meirambek Kartbay and Albania's Zelimkhan Abakarov. Abakarov would be the most likely opponent as a world champion in 2022 and world bronze medalist in 2023.
Perhaps the more interesting matchup for Lee would occur in the semifinal, where Penn State star Roman Bravo-Young could be an opponent. While the two superstar college wrestlers never competed against one another in college, Bravo-Young participating for Mexico could give college wrestling fans the chance to see it finally. To make this happen, the Penn State star would have to beat Armenia's Arsen Harutyunyann, a three-time bronze world medalist and a two-time U23 world champion in round one. From there, he would be likely to have Uzbekistan Gulomjon Abdullaev, a Tokyo Olympian. It's a long road, but before matches begin, Lee is the odds-on favorite to win gold.
A Scotts Valley, California native, Parrish is in her first-ever Olympic games as Team USA's representative at 53 kilograms. A 2022 senior world champion, Parrish has reached the top of the world stage before, but not on the Olympic stage at 27 years of age.
This should be a familiar one for college wrestling fans as the NCAA's most recent four-time champion with Penn State. He defeated USA wrestling great and now-Oklahoma State wrestling coach David Taylor twice at the US Olympic Trials to be here and is now considered a top competitor for gold at 86 kilograms in freestyle. He'll have the No. 1 seeded Azamat Dauletbekov of Kazakhstan first, a two-time world bronze medalist. If the U20 and U23 world champion can get through that, he'll have the winner of Hayato Ishiguro of Japan and Feteh Benferdjalla of Algeria. Ishiguro is the No. 8 seed and was an Olympian in 2020. Brooks' main foe, if he wrestles him, would be Iran's Hassan Aliazam Yazdani, an Olympic gold and silver medal winner in his career and three-time world champion.
If you watched the previous two Olympics, you know darn well who Maroulis is. She was Team USA's first female to win Olympic gold and also won bronze in Tokyo. She also has three world titles to her name. The 32-year-old Maryland native is the No. 5 seed. Her first opponent is a familiar one: India's Anshu Malik, who she defeated at the 2022 World Championships for a gold medal. If she can repeat that, she'll have the winner of Anhelina Lysak of Poland and Alina Hrushyna Akobiia of Ukraine. Lysak is the most likely of the two as a 2022 world bronze medalist. Her semifinal opponent could be a daunting one, as No. 1 seed Tsugumi Sakurai of Japan is likely to await her. Sakurai is a three-time world champion who will be out competing hard for Japan, who is slightly behind Team USA in the wrestling gold medal count on the women's freestyle side.
Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23.
