Amit Elor Becomes Youngest Team USA Wrestler to Win Olympic Gold

PARIS — Amit Elor’s ultimate dream was to become an Olympic champion. Now the 20-year-old is the first Team USA wrestling gold medalist of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 — and the youngest ever.

Wrestling for the gold medal in women’s freestyle 68-kilogram category, Elor defeated Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova, a 2020 Olympic bronze medalist and a three-time age-group world medalist, in a tough match, 3-0.

I'm still in disbelief,” Elor said after the  match. “I think I have a little bit of impostor syndrome. Like I said yesterday, I still feel like that little kid who just started wrestling, but currently I just became an Olympic champion.

“So all I have to say is trust in the process and believe in yourself and don't be afraid to try things because if you don't try at all, you automatically lose.”

A two-time world champion, Elor, an Israeli-American, is competing at her first Olympic Games. For the past two years, she has dominated the 72kg class (158.73 pounds). Since 72kg is not an Olympic class, she either had to go up to 76kg (167.55 lbs.) — the heaviest weight class for women at this Olympic Games — or down to 68 (149.9 lbs.). She chose to wrestle down.

In the entire Olympic tournament, Elor only ceded two points in four bouts.

So how did Elor become a wrestling sensation of the 2024 Olympic Games?

The youngest of six kids, Elor is from Walnut Creek, California (about 20 minutes east of Oakland) and started wrestling at age four.

"My brother and sister wrestled in high school and I would always go watch them with my mum and beg her to go on the mats,” she said on The Bader Show podcast in September 2022. "I went to that first practice and immediately fell in love. Something about the mats excited me."

She also took up jiu-jitsu and judo as a child, describing jiu-jitsu as “kind of like judo and wrestling combined."

The judo/jiu-jitsu-wrestling combo, as she told the Times of Israel, has given Elor “a unique wrestling style,” one that her coach said gives her an edge over her wrestling opponents.

“By borrowing from different sports, she has more ways to score that don’t feel the same as a traditional freestyle wrestler,” her coach, 2004 Olympic silver medalist Sara McMann, told the Times of Israel. Since the 2004 Olympic Games, McMann has had a successful career in martial arts.

“[Elor] has some judo throws, she’s a purple belt in jiu-jitsu, she blends Greco-[Roman] and freestyle wrestling,” McMann continued in the Times of Israel. “She makes it hard for people to anticipate where she’s going and what she wants to do.”

As a freshman at College Park High School, Elor won a California high school state title in folkstyle, then switched entirely to the international style, freestyle. In 2019, at age 15, Elor won a bronze medal at wrestling’s cadet world championships.

Since 2019, Elor has been invincible. She won senior, U23 and U20 world titles in the space of three months in 2022, becoming the youngest U.S. senior world champion in any discipline or gender at the age of 18. She retained her titles in 2023 and also won the Pan American Championships. She is the only wrestler in history to win three titles (U20, U23, and senior) two years in a row.

Elor was one day too young to be eligible for the Olympic trials ahead of Tokyo 2020 (she was born January 1, 2004). Instead, she watched from home and saw Tamyra Mensah-Stock win the only gold medal for the U.S. women’s wrestling team at the Tokyo Games — in the 68kg weight class. It helped fuel her motivation to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Per United World Wrestling, prior to the gold medal match in Paris, Elor stood at 42 wins since 2019, outscoring her opponents 375-19 in the past five years.

But even with all the wins, Elor has struggled with confidence and belief. Growing up, coaches were tough, and she did not think she was a good wrestler.

“Not a lot of positivity in the wrestling room,” she said.

“Even after my accomplishments, I was always very negative with myself,” she added. “So it's taken a lot of healing and a lot of support for me to start to believe in myself and my abilities and to think of myself as a good wrestler.”

Experience has also helped Elor — like three world championships in one summer.

Elor has also endured tragedy. One of her older brothers was killed in 2018 during a robbery. Her father, Yair, died in 2022 at age 64. He and Elor’s mother, Elana, had immigrated to the U.S. from Israel in 1980 to attend college.

“I've had a lot of traumatic life experiences,” Elor said. “I think that helps you be able to learn how to block things out and just focus on the present and living your life, and I think I use those skills out here when there's all of that pressure.”

Wrestling in a new weight class in Paris, Elor was unseeded in the 2024 Olympic tournament. In making it to the gold-medal finals, she dispatched three opponents, including 2023 world champion Buse Cavusoglu Tosun of Turkey, 10-2, and a rapid-fast 10-0 technical fall over North Korea’s Sol Gum Pak in the semifinals. Cavusoglu Tosun went on to win Olympic bronze in Paris.

“I was like I can't believe this is real, I can't believe life is real,” said Elor after she advanced to the gold medal match. “Because that little girl that started wrestling at four years old is still inside of me. And she's just looking out, like, what is happening right now?”

Facing Zhumanazarova for gold, Elor knew what she was in for; she had faced the 24-year-old Kyrgyzstani athlete at international training camps in tough bouts — something Elor kept in mind during the gold-medal bout.

“I also trusted my improvement in my abilities,” she explained. “I know that she's an extremely solid, strong wrestler, so my mindset going into the match was to be patient and to stay in good position and to trust in my style of wrestling and in my skills.”

And Elor is not done yet. Her number one goal besides becoming an Olympic champion is to compete in the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028.

“I am born and raised in California,” she said, “so to have the opportunity to compete and represent not only my country, but my state, is incredible. I have been excited ever since I heard about it.”

An award-winning freelance writer based in Vermont, Peggy Shinn is in Paris covering her eighth Olympic Games. She has contributed to TeamUSA.org since its inception in 2008.