2024 Paris Olympics Men's Freestyle Wrestling By The Numbers
2024 Paris Olympics Men's Freestyle Wrestling By The Numbers
A deep dive into the results of the men's freestyle brackets at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.
We're back, with one more investigation of the results from the men's freestyle wrestling divisions at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
We already showed you how all the athletes who transferred federations did at the Games. We also showed you a bunch of maps of the hometowns of all the participants and medalists of the men's freestyle brackets. Now, we will present a slew of tables and facts about the men's freestyle brackets.
First, the humble medal table.
Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Japan | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
Georgia | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
Uzbekistan | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
Bulgaria | 1 | 1 | ||
Bahrain | 1 | 1 | ||
Iran | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
United States | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
Azerbaijan | 2 | 2 | ||
Albania | 2 | 2 | ||
Turkey | 1 | 1 | ||
Puerto Rico | 1 | 1 | ||
India | 1 | 1 | ||
Greece | 1 | 1 |
Next, a breakdown of the unofficial points scored per country per weight class. Please note that official scores are not kept at the Olympics.
57 | 65 | 74 | 86 | 97 | 125 | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
IRI | 20 | 8 | 20 | 15 | 20 | 83 | |
JPN | 25 | 25 | 20 | 8 | 78 | ||
USA | 20 | 0 | 15 | 15 | 10 | 2 | 62 |
UZB | 15 | 25 | 10 | 50 | |||
GEO | 0 | 0 | 20 | 25 | 45 | ||
AZE | 0 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 15 | 15 | 42 |
ALB | 6 | 15 | 15 | 36 | |||
PUR | 10 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 25 | ||
BUL | 25 | 25 | |||||
BRN | 25 | 25 | |||||
KGZ | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 | |||
HUN | 10 | 8 | 18 | ||||
POL | 6 | 10 | 16 | ||||
MGL | 10 | 0 | 6 | 16 | |||
ARM | 8 | 8 | 16 | ||||
TUR | 0 | 15 | 15 | ||||
IND | 15 | 15 | |||||
GRE | 0 | 15 | 15 | ||||
UKR | 2 | 10 | 0 | 12 | |||
TJK | 10 | 10 | |||||
SRB | 0 | 10 | 10 | ||||
SMR | 10 | 10 | |||||
KAZ | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 8 | ||
CHN | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 8 | ||
CAN | 4 | 4 | 8 | ||||
MDA | 4 | 0 | 4 | ||||
GBS | 4 | 0 | 4 | ||||
CUB | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | |||
BLR | 4 | 4 | |||||
SVK | 2 | 2 | |||||
RSA | 2 | 2 | |||||
AUS | 2 | 0 | 2 | ||||
VEN | 0 | 0 | |||||
SAM | 0 | 0 | |||||
NGR | 0 | 0 | |||||
MKD | 0 | 0 | |||||
MEX | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||||
ITA | 0 | 0 | |||||
GER | 0 | 0 | |||||
EOR | 0 | 0 | |||||
EGY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
DOM | 0 | 0 | |||||
ALG | 0 | 0 |
How about a chart of all the participants in men's freestyle, broken down by continent, but at the last three Olympics, to compare Paris to Tokyo and Rio? Great, how about it.
Men's freestyle Participants:
2016 | 2021 | 2024 | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|
EUROPE | 52 | 39 | 37 | 128 |
ASIA | 35 | 30 | 29 | 94 |
PANAM | 19 | 15 | 19 | 53 |
AFRICA | 10 | 12 | 9 | 31 |
OCEANA | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
Now the same chart but by total points per continent:
2016 | 2021 | 2024 | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|
EUROPE | 388 | 314 | 270 | 972 |
ASIA | 180 | 241 | 313 | 734 |
PANAM | 116 | 125 | 99 | 340 |
AFRICA | 6 | 10 | 6 | 22 |
OCEANA | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
Lastly, that same chart again but this time points per participant per continent:
2016 | 2021 | 2024 | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|
EUROPE | 7.5 | 8.1 | 7.3 | 7.6 |
ASIA | 5.1 | 8.0 | 10.8 | 7.8 |
PANAM | 6.1 | 8.3 | 5.2 | 6.4 |
AFRICA | 0.6 | 0.8 | 0.7 | 0.7 |
OCEANA | 0.0 | 0.7 | 0.3 |
Europe and Asia are clearly the top two continents, with Pan-American in third, well ahead of Africa and Oceania. However, it appears that Asia may have gotten a leg up on Europe as being the most talented continent. Some of that is likely due to the Russian Federation not competing in Paris and several of their athletes transferring to Asian countries. Whether or not this trend persists at the next Olympics and beyond remains to be seen.
As we've seen from the previously linked post on Olympic transfers, wrestlers who were born in Russia still scored more unofficial points than wrestlers who were born in other countries -- by a large margin in fact (205 points to USA's second-place 97 points, for those not interested in clicking on links and opening new tabs). So how did Russian-born athletes do at the last two Olympics? Here is that table.
Points by Russian Born Athletes:
YEAR | 57 | 65 | 74 | 86 | 97 | 125 | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2016 | 12 | 25 | 20 | 44 | 54 | 17 | 172 |
2021 | 40 | 33 | 45 | 25 | 39 | 0 | 182 |
2024 | 6 | 27 | 66 | 56 | 40 | 10 | 205 |
More points were scored by Russian-born athletes in men's freestyle in Paris than in Tokyo or Rio, despite Russia having no team in Paris and having none of their wrestlers compete as Neutral Athletes. But what about raw numbers of Russian-born athletes, you may be asking, are those going up or down?
Thankfully we have a table to answer your question.
Russian Born Men's Freestyle Participants:
YEAR | 57 | 65 | 74 | 86 | 97 | 125 | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2016 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 22 |
2021 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 19 |
2024 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 19 |
Despite the IOC's ban on the Russian Olympic Committee and the subsequent boycott by Russians who were cleared to compete as Neutral Athletes, the participation numbers in men's freestyle by Russian-born athletes is, perhaps surprisingly to the crowd insisting on assigning asterisks to this year's results, essentially flat.
We can also dig a little deeper into the Russian-born athletes at the 2024 Olympics.
- 19 Russian-born athletes competed in men's freestyle in Paris.
- Three of those athletes won gold medals.
- Seven won medals of any color.
- Five more competed for a medal (i.e. finished fifth).
- All but two of the 19 Russian-born wrestlers finished in the top 10.
- Russian-born athletes represented 15 different nations at the Olympics. Albania had the most Russians with three. Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan were next with two. 12 other countries had one Russian transfer.
- 11 Russian transfers were from the Republic of Dagestan, a province or state in southern Russian in the Caucasus Mountains region.
- Three other transfers were from North Ossetia-Alania and one other from Kabardino-Balkaria, two more Republics also located in The Caucasus Mountains region.
- Four of the transfers were from the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutsk, which can be found in Siberia, north of China.
- Six of the seven Russian-born Olympic medals were won by Dagestanis, while the seventh was won by an Ossetian (Cherman Valiev's bronze at 74kg).
- Dagestani is actually a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nation within Russia, and with three of those Dagestani medals coming from Avars (Akmed Tazhudniov and Magomed Ramazanov's golds at 97 and 86kg respectively. as well as Magomedkhan Magomedov's bronze at 97kg), while two others were Chechens (Razambek Jamalov's gold at 74kg and Islam Dudaev's bronze at 65kg). The seventh Dagestani was earned by a Lezgin (Dauren Kurugliev's bronze at 86kg).
But that's enough about the Russian-born Olympic men's freestylers. Here are some facts about the Paris Olympians regardless of where they were born.
- Six Olympians won medals for at least the second time in Paris.
- Geno Petriashvili and Taha Akgul each won their third Olympic medal at 125kg. Geno now has one medal of each color after winning gold in Paris, while Taha won his second bronze after winning gold in Rio in 2016.
- Amir Zare moved up one podium step, going from bronze in Tokyo to silver in Paris, also all at 125kg.
- Amir's teammate, Hasan Yazdani, won his third Olympic medal. Yazdani now has a pair of silvers to go with his Rio gold.
- Rei Higuichi upgraded his Tokyo silver for Parisian gold at 57kg.
- Kyle Dake won his second bronze at his second Olympic Games.
- The youngest competitor in the men's freestyle division was Feng Lu of China at 74kg, who is 20 years old, born December 10, 2003.
- The oldest competitor was Geandry Garzon, a Cuban 74kg wrestler who is born November 3, 1983, making him 40 years old.
- The youngest medalist is Akmed Tazhudino, who is 21. Aman Sehrawat, also 22, is the second youngest medalist. Amir Zare is the third youngest at 22.
- The oldest medalist is the recently retired Taha Akgul, 33, born November 22, 1990. Taha left his shoes in the middle of the mat following his bronze medal match victory. The second oldest is Kyle Dake, also 33, born February 24, 1991.
- The average age of all the men's freestyle medalists in Paris was 27. The median age of the medalists was 26. The mode was 25. And if you know the difference between all three of those terms you will make your old math teacher very proud.