Olympic Qualifier Preview: Spencer Lee takes aim at Paris

A common refrain among Iowa wrestlers is that ‘the biggest match in the world is simply the next match on the schedule.’

Now, whether outsiders believe that sentiment to more or less be coach-speak nonsense is up to them.

But for Spencer Lee – one (former) Hawkeye who has repeatedly cited that mantra ever since arriving in Iowa City back in 2017 – it has perhaps never been truer than it is right now.

This Saturday in Istanbul, Turkey, Lee will take the mat just four wins away from realizing a lifelong wrestling dream – punching his ticket to the Olympic Games.

Standing in his way is a deep, talented field of 26 other wrestlers from around the world all yearning desperately to do the same. When it’s all said and done, only three of them will have made that dream a reality.

With the competition now just days away and brackets having finally been released to the public, the forthcoming preview will detail not only Lee’s potential path to Olympic qualification, but hopefully help to lend some greater context for the task at hand to those who may be somewhat less familiar with the international wrestling scene (including yours truly).

So, having said all that let’s get right to it – beginning with how Lee found himself competing at the ‘last chance’ World Olympic Games Qualifier in the first place.

How we got here

Only 16 countries qualify per weight class for the Olympics in each of wrestling’s three disciplines (men’s/women’s freestyle and Greco-Roman) – and with six weight classes per discipline that means just 288 wrestlers in the world get to call themselves ‘Olympians’ every four years.

(Also note that athletes don’t technically qualify themselves for an Olympic spot. Rather, they qualify a spot for their country. Once that happens, a country can send whomever it chooses to represent it at the since-qualified weight.)

For a country to qualify for one of those 16 spots per weight class, it needs an athlete to meet one of the following criteria:

1. Finish in the top five at the most recent World Championships (in this case held in September of 2023)
2. Finish in the top two at a Continental Qualification Tournament held earlier in the current Olympic year – of which the wrestling world is divided into four separate qualifiers (Pan American, European, Asian and Africa/Oceania)
3. Finish in the top three at the ‘last chance’ World Olympic Games Qualifier (the subject of this article)

In men’s freestyle, the United States qualified for the Paris Olympics via Criteria #1 at 4/6 weight classes.

Unfortunately, at the other two – including Spencer Lee’s 57 kilograms – they failed to do so back in 2023.

A few months ago, they’d fail to do so yet again, as Zane Richards lost in the 57kg semifinals of the Pan American qualifier (it was also Richards who finished outside of the top five at the 2023 World Championships).

This meant that while 4/6 American winners at last month’s Olympic Team Trials in State College, PA had automatically punched their tickets to Paris, both Lee and Zain Retherford (65kg) still had more work to do.

And now here we are.

The task/path ahead

It’s important to note for less experienced viewers of international wrestling that while a ‘top-three finish’ this weekend will earn an Olympic berth, that third and final ‘finisher’ will be determined in a slightly different manner than more American-centric fans are accustomed to.

But first, yes, both athletes who emerge unscathed from their half of the bracket will be your typical ‘finalists’ – and in doing so secure a top-two finish and a spot for their country at the Olympics.

However, no ‘final’ will actually be contested between the two undefeated athletes. There will be no World Olympic Qualifier ‘champion.’ There are merely World Olympic Qualifier…er, qualifiers.

And it’s getting to the third and final member of that trio where things are a bit different.

If a wrestler loses a match this weekend, the only way they are guaranteed another is if the opponent that beat them advances all the way to the (uncontested) finals.

Say Spencer Lee makes it to the finals on the back of a 4-0 record and another athlete from the opposite side of the bracket does the same – in that instance all eight of their combined opponents would be pulled into repechage (i.e. consolations) where they’d wrestle out their own miniature bracket to see who finishes in third place.

Make the finals of the championship bracket and none of this is of an athlete’s concern. But for Iowa/Spencer Lee fans out there, just know that if he were to lose on Saturday it then becomes paramount that whoever defeated him continues onward to make the finals themselves.

Only in that scenario would he get a ‘second chance’ to qualify for Paris by wrestling back for third.

Of course, a more positive outlook on things is that while a total of 27 athletes are set to populate the bracket (link here) at 57 kilograms this weekend in Turkey, all things considered it probably couldn’t have broken much better for Iowa’s three-time NCAA champion.

Being that Lee has been absent from the international freestyle scene for such a long time, he was among 23 athletes randomly drawn into the bracket (the top four were seeded based upon United World Wrestling’s ranking series points).

The result? His easiest potential path to an Olympic bid won’t include any more than two of the top 10-or-so favored competitors as viewed by folks far more immersed in international wrestling than I am.

Look, it’d be disingenuous, and frankly, time consuming for me to pretend as though I possess any sort of in-depth knowledge about the rest of the field at 57 kilograms.

Therefore, I’d strongly encourage those interested to read (among others) pieces like this from USA Wrestling and this from FloWrestling in order to gain a more nuanced background of the field Lee is set to contend with in Istanbul.

The two most well-regarded foes on Lee’s half of the bracket are Alireza Sarlak (Iran) and Wanhao Zou (China).

If Lee wins his opener against Morocco’s Ben Tarik he’d get the top-seeded Zou next.

To give you an idea of the credentials of the Chinese lightweight, Zou earned a bronze medal at the 2018 Under-23 World Championships, while his highest finish at the senior level was fifth back in 2022, followed by a 10^th-place finish last year.

At those 2022 World Championships it was Hawkeye alum Thomas Gilman – whom Lee beat two matches to none at the recent Team USA Trials – who ultimately knocked Zou out of the championship bracket in a controlled 8-2 semifinal decision (which Flo subscribers out there can watch at this link).

A quarterfinal bout with 2022 European Champion Vladimir Egorov (Macedonia) could follow for Lee, and might very well precede a semifinal match (with an Olympic berth on the line) against the aforementioned Sarlak – whom most prognosticators seem to favor as one of the top athletes in the entire field alongside Lee and a few others.

The Iranian, just like Zou, has a U23 bronze medal of his own (2019), but his high-water mark on the senior level was a silver medal at the 2021 World Championships thanks to a finals match he lost to, you guessed it, Thomas Gilman.

That bout, a 5-3 decision – which you can watch in its entirety below – was another battle controlled by Gilman, who led 5-0 before giving up a takedown and a step out point in the last 40 seconds to make the margin appear a bit more respectable.

Besides that silver medal performance, Sarlak’s lone additional appearance on the senior World Championship stage was in 2023, where he lost his only match of the tournament.

If Sarlak were to fail to advance to the semifinals this Saturday, in his stead could be Georgian (the country, not the state) Roberti Dingashvili, a bronze medalist at the recent 2024 European Championships.

Now, will this all play out in a way that most ‘experts’ would predict?

Maybe, maybe not.

But as I see it today (as a noted ‘non-expert’ on the field of competitors as a whole) these are the most likely obstacles Spencer Lee will have to traverse to secure the first-ever Olympic berth of his career.

The rest of the field

For the sake of the collective nerves of Iowa fans, hopefully this next section will be completely irrelevant to the goings on this weekend.

Were that to be the case, it’d most likely mean that Spencer Lee won all four of his matches and is on his way to Paris.

I say that because the only way Lee would step onto the mat with any of the guys whose Olympic/World Championship credentials I’m about to list – all of whom are on the opposite side of the bracket from Lee – would be if he had to wrestle his way through the repechage for the third and final Olympic bid after taking a loss earlier in the tournament.

Aman Aman (India)

• Under-17 = bronze (2018), bronze (2019), gold (2021)
• Under-23 = gold (2022)
• Senior-level = 11^th (2023)

Muhammet Karavus (Turkey)

• Under-17 = 5^th (2019)
• Under-20 = silver (2021)
• Senior-level = 15^th (2023)

Horst Lehr (Germany)

• Under-17 = 7^th (2016)
• Under-20 = 10^th (2017), 18^th (2018), 12^th (2019)
• Under-23 = 8^th (2022)
• Senior-level = 18^th (2019), *bronze (2021)*, 20^th (2022)

*lost 15-5 to Thomas Gilman during his 2021 bronze medal run*

Georgi Vangelov (Bulgaria)

• Senior-level = 8^th (2015), 7^th (2021), 5^th (2022), 26^th (2023)
• Olympics = 5^th in 2021

Andrii Yatsenko (Ukraine)

• Under-23 = 7^th (2017)
• Senior-level = bronze (2017)

*lost 5-2 to Thomas Gilman during his 2017 bronze medal run*

Zanabazar Zandanbud (Mongolia)

• Under-20 = 5^th (2015)
• Under-23 = 9^th (2018), 5^th (2019)
• Senior-level = *bronze (2022)*, 15^th (2023)

*lost 5-1 to Thomas Gilman during his 2022 bronze medal run*

I list all those credentials for a couple of reasons:

For one, to give folks some base-level context as to the ridiculous strength of a tournament field littered with high caliber wrestlers who are both used to winning and will be expecting to do so in Istanbul.

And for two, it kind of sets the stage for what I’m about to say next, which is that I’m picking Spencer Lee to win the whole damn thing – or at least all the way up until the uncontested ‘final’.

Gimme Lee

2016 was the last time that Spencer Lee competed in an elite international tournament – that being the Under-20 World Championships.

Nearly eight years later he’ll make his long-awaited return to a similarly competitive environment – albeit this time at the senior level – and the stakes couldn’t possibly be any higher.

That lack of recent familiarity with international competition – what some might even describe as ‘rust’ – leaves some question as to how he’ll adapt to a collection of opponents as diverse stylistically as it is dangerous.

Were we to get inside the mind of Spencer Lee, I imagine his response to such doubts might be some variation of the following sentiment:

Look, I know he lacks international experience at this level.

But guess what? Of all the impressive age-level accolades I detailed for each of the other presumed ‘top contenders’ in this field, Spencer Lee’s blows them out of the water:

Under-17 World Championships (2014)

• 4-0 record (three tech. falls, one pin)
• Outscored his opponents by a combined 43-0

Under-20 World Championships (2015)

• 5-0 record (five tech. falls)
• Outscored his opponents by a combined 56-4

Under-20 World Championships (2016)

• 5-0 record (three tech. falls, one pin, one decision)
• Outscored his opponents by a combined 46-9

In 14 age-level World Championship matches against the best young talent from across the planet Lee won 13/14 matches by either tech. fall or pin, outscoring his foes by a combined margin of 145-13, and only giving up points in three of them.

The lone match he didn’t win by either technical superiority or fall was this crazy come-from-behind U20 finals bout back in 2016:

(Remember how many folks have previously intimated that he doesn’t really have that comeback ‘club’ in his bag?)

Sure, it’s been a minute, and the current competition is older, wiser, and better now.

But so is Lee.

He just won back-to-back matches (one via fall) versus four-time World/Olympic medalist Thomas Gilman – a more credentialed opponent than anyone in the field this weekend. And let’s not forget, Gilman also happens to have World Championship wins over five of the top contenders amidst the very same bracket Lee will step into on Saturday.

I know the transitive property isn’t always the most reliable tool in sports prognostications but come on guys.

(Spencer also teched future 61-kilogram senior World champion Vito Arujau 14-4 back in 2019, FWIW.)

Knowing what I know and having seen what I’ve seen I just don’t think I can pick anyone anywhere against an in-from, in-shape Spencer Lee.

Call me crazy, but that’s how I’ve personally felt ever since he stepped onto campus in Iowa City a little less than a decade ago.

Of course, there are no guarantees in the sport of wrestling. History (including Spencer’s own) bears that out time and time again.

I’ll ‘guarantee’ you this though, I’d sure as heck feel a lot less confident picking anyone against him.

How to watch

That’s enough from me.

How long much longer until this thing gets started??

Oh, well I’m glad I/you asked, because this isn’t exactly going to be a picnic for those of us tuning in from stateside.

Action commences in Istanbul this Saturday morning at 2:00 a.m. (CST).

(Yes, you’re reading that correctly.)

The preliminary rounds – up to three matches for Lee if he continues to advance – will run from 2:00-8:00 a.m. (CST) as us Midwesterners deal with the harsh reality of being eight hours behind the good folks in Turkey.

Should Spencer start 3-0, his fourth and final match of the day would begin around 10:00 a.m. (CST) – with a semifinal win securing his spot in Paris later this summer.

Lose at any point on Saturday morning, and assuming he’s pulled back into the repechage (consolations) he wouldn’t return to the mat until Sunday morning – when he’d need to win multiple matches between 7:00 and 11:00 a.m. (CST) in order to earn the third and final Olympic bid at 57 kilograms.

So, that’s the when, and you already know the where/who/what/etc.

That leaves us with the how.

The entire World Olympic Games Qualifier will be streamed live at this link by FloWrestling (subscription required).

For those of you who won’t be staying/waking up in the middle of the night to check out the action Flo typically has a very quick turnaround on archiving individual matches. So, if you want to catch up on everything after getting out of bed at a more reasonable hour (perhaps just in time for Lee’s late-morning match to go to Paris?) you can always do that too – again, assuming you’re subscribed to Flo.

Otherwise, I will be one of the lunatics up well before the crack of dawn to watch things live, tweeting my usual match-by-match thoughts as both Lee and American teammate Zain Retherford (65kg) seek to become first-time Olympians.

I hope you’ll all join me in some form or fashion however/whenever you can because this really should be quite the day or two of high stakes wrestling.

I’m so pumped up I’m almost looking forward to my 1:45 wakeup call on Saturday morning.

(Almost)

Anyway, thank you guys as always for reading and I’ll talk to you again real soon – hopefully about a certain Hawkeye having realized his Olympic dreams.