Jordan BurroughsA decade-long series above American wrestling struck during the Olympic Trials.
Kyle Dake swept the 2012 Olympic gold medalist and four-time world champion 3-0, 3-2 in their best of three finals to earn US place in Tokyo in the 74kg freestyle division.
Burroughs did not qualify for the Olympics, having made nine previous Olympic or World Cup teams until the start of his senior career in 2011.
“It just suggests that a run is over for me,” Burroughs, a 32-year-old who said before hearings that he intends to wrestle further after 2021, told NBCSN. “It’s hard. It’s going to be hard for a while. … The future is still bright for me, even though it just will not be in Tokyo.
“It’s not over for me.”
A total of 15 wrestlers qualified for the Olympic Games in Fort Worth, Texas on Saturday over free men and women and Greco-Romans. Another three could earn their points in a global qualifier in May.
All the other Olympic and world champions won their final series, including gold medals in Rio Helen Maroulis and Kyle Snyder, plus Adeline Gray, the American record holder with five world titles.
MORE: Results on Olympic Wrestling Trials | Athletes qualify for the US Olympic team
Dake, a 79kg (not an Olympic weight) two-time world champion, became the first American to eliminate Burroughs in a trial. He entered with a 1-7 record against the legend.
It looked emphatically different in their first game. Dake handed Burroughs his first exclusion in more than 200 games at senior level and his first straight loss to an American at senior level. Burroughs’ four previous defeats against compatriots, including one against Dake in 2017, were via a break-even point.
Dake passed in the first ten seconds of the second game, lifting him beyond his bounds. Burroughs removed its double-legged brand by the end of the first period but could not score points. Dake scored and held two more in the first 35 seconds of the second period.
At the end, Dake puts his arm around Burroughs, who was on his knees, pats Burroughs’ chest and speaks into his ear.
“I just thanked him and said I appreciated him,” Dake said. “He pushed me to a level I did not know myself.”
Dake, 30, made his first Olympic team, eight years after completing an unprecedented career at Cornell. He is the only man to have won NCAA titles in four different weight classes.
Since then, he has lost to Burroughs in the World Cup finals in 2013, 2015 and 2017. In 2016, he moved out of Burroughs’ 74kg and up to 86kg divisions, in part because Burroughs said goodbye in the trial.
Dake, after losing the 2016 86kg Olympic trials in the final, with the eventual bronze medal J’den Cox, declined to 79 kg to win the last two world championships (while Burroughs took 74 kg bronze in the last two worlds). Dake then dropped off to challenge Burroughs at Olympic trials.
Altogether two of the 18 finals of Saturday were cattle.
In the final of the evening, Maroulis pinned Jenna Burkert in 22 seconds in the rubber match of their 57 kg series. It ends with tears from both athletes.
After Maroulis became the first American woman to win an Olympic wrestling title in 2016, she retired briefly in 2019 during a two-year period in which she suffered a concussion and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I had a lot of trouble separating my emotions from this tournament,” she said. “That’s what I fought so hard for.”
Maroulis later revealed that she had torn an MCL two and a half weeks earlier.
Burkert competed one week after her mother died after complications from open heart surgery. After the loss, she said on the mat, “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Sad again,” Burkert later said. ‘I know my mother does not care about the victories and losses, but I just wanted to honor her with a victory.
“I do not regret my loss. I’m sorry for the sadness my mother went through. ”
Maroulis is one of the five women in the Olympic team with six women holding a world championship medal. No one has more than Gray, who finished the 17-year-old Kylie Welker in less than two minutes of the allowed six in both games of 76 kg.
Gray goes to her second Olympics after shockingly missing the medals in Rio. She was upset in the quarterfinals in 2016 and achieved a two-year victory.
“It was a disappointment not to go there and walk away with a gold medal,” she said. “I really feel like I’m the most dominant and best person in the weight class.”
Gray revealed six months after the Olympics that she was struggling with a shoulder injury in Brazil. She underwent shoulder surgery in January 2017 and repaired a torn meniscus in her knee, and went through 11 months between games, missing out on that year’s world championship while also with the U.S. Army. Damaris Sanders.
Gray was not sure about the return, but according to freestylewrestling.org set a record of 44-1 in matches she contested between 2018 and 2020.
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Snyder, who became the youngest U.S. Olympic wrestling champion in history at Rio at 20, made the former Ohio State teammate easy to work with Kollin Moore to lift the team to 97 kg. This week a match between Snyder and the two-time world champion of 92 kg was expected J’den Cox, but Cox lost weight before Friday’s early rounds.
Snyder may have another email in Tokyo with his primary international rival, Russia Abdulrashid Sadulayev, probably the world’s best pound-for-pound wrestler.
The USA’s other top medal prospects are led by Tamyra Mensah-Stock, who also won the Olympic trials in 2016, but then failed to score three tries to qualify for the US quota place for Rio at international tournaments. Mensah-Stock returned to win the 2019 World Cup at 68kg and beat the Rio gold medalist from Japan.
“It’s still a long way to go,” she said. “I wanted to come back and prove to myself and everyone that I can become an Olympic player.”
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