LONDON (AP) — Iran has never won a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, despite historically being among the world’s top wrestling nations.
Their hopes of breaking that streak have never looked brighter.
At the London Games, they’ve got three wrestlers: Hamid Soryan, Omid Noroozi and Saeid Morad Abdvali, all of whom are capable of producing golds on back-to-back-to-back days.
Wrestling gets under way on Sunday with the 55 and 74 kilogram Greco-Roman events in the ExCel Centre.
Soryan is the favorite in 55 kilograms, just as he was four years ago in Beijing when he entered the competition as a three-time world champion.
But Soryan got knocked out in the quarterfinals of the last Olympics and finished fifth. He rallied to recapture the world title in 2009 and 2010, but Azerbaijan’s Rovshan Bayramov was the winner at last year’s worlds over Elbek Tazhyiev of Belarus.
Spenser Mango, the American entry at 55 kilograms, has an outside shot of surviving the repechage, a consolation bracket, and earning one of the two bronzes being handed out.
But it’s unlikely Mango will make a serious push for the gold-medal match with Bayramov or the Russian, Mingiyan Sememov, looming in the second round.
In 74 kilograms, the Russians can boast that they’ve got the favorite.
Expect to hear that a lot over the next week.
Russia’s Roman Vlasov won the 2011 world title at just 21 years old, a mere two years after winning junior worlds. He followed that up with a victory in the European championships in Belgrade this year.
Turkey’s Selcuk Cebi is a former two-time world champion whose run to a third title ended when Vlasov beat him in the 2011 worlds in Istanbul.
It’ll be hard for fans not to peak at their brackets and envision a rematch between the 30-year-old Cebi and Vlasov, the young star of the weight class.
Sweden has dominated the 74 kilogram class with an Olympic-high nine medals, three of them gold. But the Swedes haven’t medaled in 20 years and they haven’t taken gold since Gosta Andersson won at the last London Olympics in 1948.
The Swedes have a decent shot at changing that behind Robert Rosengren, who was fifth at last year’s world championships in Istanbul.
The U.S. will send out 22-year-old Ben Provisor, who’ll be competing in his first Olympics.
