Paris Olympics: Amit Elor, Team USA’s wrestling phenom, wins historic gold

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PARIS — Amit Elor, a 20-year-old wrestling wunderkind from California, capped a five-year run of invincibility with history here at the 2024 Olympics on Tuesday.

She won gold in wrestling’s 68-kilogram division, beating Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova 3-0 in the final at Arena Champ-de-Mars.

Elor scored two points on a takedown in the first period and earned another point after Zhumanazarova was penalized after the activity period expired. She then controlled the second period, giving Zhumanazarova no avenues to score and winning the match.

And she became the youngest U.S. wrestler, male or female, to ever win an Olympic gold medal.

Elor is perhaps the most dominant of Team USA’s 592 Olympics athletes at the moment. She swept through to Tuesday’s final by an aggregate score of 28-2. Forced to drop down from her usual weight class, 72-kg, which is not on the Olympic program, she debuted by defeating and deflating the reigning world champion at 68-kg, Turkey’s Buse Tosun Çavuşoğlu, who seemed paralyzed by fear of Elor the moment both stepped onto the mat. Elor beat Tosun 10-2.

And the surprise was not the lopsided margin.

“I'm surprised anybody scored on her at all,” Elor’s coach, Sara McMann, said.

Next up was Poland’s Wiktoria Choluj. Elor’s aggressive, rock-solid, lightning-quick, technically sound wrestling left Choluj on the verge of tears minutes later in a post-match interview zone. Choluj leaned on a railing, and occasionally tossed her chin toward the floor, exhausted and demoralized.

Hours after that, Elor dispatched North Korea’s Sol Gum Pak with a takedown and four turns, for 10 points, in a span of 27 seconds. The entire semifinal lasted one minute and 44 seconds, ending in “victory by technical superiority” — wrestling’s version of a mercy rule.

It was an astounding-but-anticipated Olympic introduction for Elor, who was born on Jan. 1, 2004 — and therefore missed the age cutoff for the Tokyo Games by one day. The daughter of Israeli immigrants and the youngest of six siblings, she found wrestling as a 4-year-old tagging along with a parent to her older brother’s practices. She was pushed toward more traditionally girly sports, but all of her brothers played football or wrestled; her dad had thrown shot put in college; she was drawn toward a more physical sport, even one that was, at times, unwelcoming to girls.

Throughout her first few years in the sport, she wrestled boys. They’d complain about having to battle her. And “once she started beating up the boys, there were a lot of coaches that didn’t like it,” her mom told USA Today.

Elor also recalled Monday that many of her early coaches were “very tough on me. Not a lot of positivity in the wrestling room,” she said. As a result, “I've always believed that I was not good at wrestling,” she explained. “Even after my accomplishments, I was always very negative with myself.”

The accomplishments, though, kept accumulating. The training intensified — it incorporated judo and jiu-jitsu, and now features sand workouts. High school opponents stood no chance. On the international stage, Elor lost once, at the Under-17 World Championships in 2019. "I'll get it next year," she said at the time. She has not lost a match of any kind, at any weight, anywhere, since.

She won back-to-back under-20 world championships; and back-to-back under-23 world championships; and back-to-back senior world championships, becoming the youngest American wrestler (18 at the time) to ever win gold at worlds. She developed a reputation as a generational talent, “the young GOAT,” a physical specimen and tactical savant unlike anything wrestling had ever seen.

Along the way, Elor also dealt with tragedy. One of her brothers was murdered in 2018. Her dad died in mysterious circumstances in 2022. She experienced the type of grief that could have derailed her sporting rise. “I've had a lot of traumatic life experiences,” she said here at Arena Champ-de-Mars on Monday.

Instead, she learned to compartmentalize thoughts, feelings, emotions. “I think that helps you learn how to block things out and just focus on the present and living your life,” she said. “I use those skills out here when there's all that pressure.”

She came to Paris unbeaten in her last 37 international matches by a cumulative score of 322-16. The only impediments to gold were a searing Olympic spotlight and the necessary weight-class switch. United World Wrestling offers 10 divisions at its championships; the Olympics only offer six, and not Elor’s 72-kg. So she chose to cut roughly eight pounds in preparation for the biggest meets of her life.

The weight cut was a challenge. But her brother, Orry, helped by preparing nutritious meals, which made it doable and, in the end, “extremely easy,” McMann said. As the Olympics approached, Elor was in “really high spirits, really happy,” McMann added. She toured Paris, undaunted by the moment that was approaching, inspired rather than fazed by her growing audience, as she has been her entire life.

"The more people watch me, the more I feel that urge to explode and fight even harder," Elor explained. "And when I'm walking out and stepping onto that mat, instead of there being nerves and doubt, the second I hear everybody cheering, and I see those familiar faces, I just have this sharp focus that kicks in, and this desire to fight the second the whistle blows."

And fight she did, to a gold medal, and into wrestling’s Olympic historic books.