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CHASING OLYMPIC HISTORY


Burroughs aims to join Mehnert, Smith and Baumgartner as two-time champs


by Gary Abbott Jordan Burroughs has achieved tremendous things since he blasted onto the international scene in 2011, after completing his college career at Nebraska as a two-time NCAA champion and Hodge Trophy winner. After winning a gold medal in the first World Championships he attended in Istanbul, Turkey in 2011, Burroughs has been arguably the best wrestler in the world, regardless of style. His 2012 Olympic gold medal, three


World titles (2011, 2013, 2015) and a 2014 World bronze medal already makes him one of the greatest in American wrestling history. He won a record 69 straight matches to start his Senior-level career. Going into the 2016 Olympics, his


Senior freestyle record is an amazing 129-2 record, a blistering 98.4% winning percentage. With the rest of the world aiming at him every time he steps on the mat, Burroughs keeps improving and maintaining an edge on all comers. With a victory at 74 kg in men’s freestyle at the Rio Games on August 19, Jordan Burroughs would become just the fourth U.S. wrestler to win two Olympic gold medals, joining George Mehnert (1904, 1908), Bruce Baumgartner (1984,


1992) and John Smith (1988, 1992) in this very elite company. The United States has won 129 medals


at the Olympic Games in wrestling, with 52 gold medals, 43 silver medals and 34 bronze medals in all three Olympic disci- plines. No nation can match that kind of production at the Olympics in our sport. There have been 49 different Americans who have won an Olympic gold medal, but just three who have done it twice. The first two-timer is relatively unknown


in American wrestling circles. Mehnert, a lightweight out of Newark, N.J., was one of seven Olympic champions from the United States at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Mo. In fact, the USA had all the Olympic wrestling champions that year, as no other nation entered the tournament. Mehnert won the 52 kg weight class in St. Louis. Four year later, Mehnert returned to the Olympics in London, England, and won the gold medal at 54 kg. William Press of Great Britain won the silver medal and Aubert Cote of Canada added the bronze medal behind Mehnert. In the five weight classes contested, the USA had two champions, as George Dole was the gold medals at 60 kg. According to wrestling historian Mike Chapman, Mehnert “was considered the best wrestler of the 1908


John Smith, two-time Olympic champ, four-time World champ. File photo.


Games.” It would be another 84 years before the


USA had another two-time Olympic wrestling champion, and at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, there would be two American superstars who won their second Olympic wrestling gold, Bruce Baumgartner and John Smith.


Baumgartner won his first Olympic gold


medal in 1984, at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. The New Jersey native made his name as an NCAA champion for Indiana State, and qualified for his first Senior World freestyle team in 1982. He was part of a powerful 1984 American freestyle team which won seven gold medals and nine total medals in the Olympics. It was an Olympic Games which was boycotted by the Soviet Union and some of their allies. Baumgartner pinned his first two oppo-


nentz, Vasilie Andrei of Romania and Ayhan Taskin of Turkey. In the gold-medal finals, he dominated Bob Molle of Canada, 10-2. In 1988, Baumgartner had his first


Bruce Baumgartner scores a takedown at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles on the way to his first Olympic gold medal. USA Wrestling file photo.


chance to become a two-timer at the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. He won his first World title in 1986 to go with his Olympic gold. In Seoul, he domi-


Continued on page 6 USA Wrestler 5


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