Paris Olympics: Meet Amit Elor, Team USA’s 20-year-old wrestling phenom who never loses

PARIS — Team USA’s most dominant athlete is a 150-pound rock of invincibility. She bounded onto a mat Monday for her Olympic debut, and even world champions seemed paralyzed by fear. They dallied in upright positions, reluctant to grapple with the woman who’d soon defeat them, terrified of American phenom Amit Elor.

Elor, 20, has never lost a senior international wrestling match. She is the back-to-back reigning world champion, and under-23 world champion, and under-20 world champion at 72 kilograms — one of four weight classes shunned by the Olympics. So, Elor dropped down to 68kg; unseeded at the new weight, she drew the division’s reigning world champ, Buse Tosun Çavuşoğlu from Turkey, in the very first Olympic round.

And she attacked Tosun. She won point after point, and ultimately forced Tosun’s devastated head to the floor. She won 10-2, and the only surprise here at the Arena Champ-de-Mars was not the lopsided margin.

“I'm surprised anybody scored on her at all,” Elor’s coach, Sara McMann, said after her first two victories.

The second, in a quarterfinal, by a 8-0 margin, left Polish opponent Wiktoria Choluj on the verge of tears in a post-match interview zone. Choluj leaned on a railing, and occasionally tossed her chin toward the floor.

And Elor?

“I'm relatively happy with how I did today,” she said moments later.

Hours after that, she beat North Korea’s Sol Gum Pak in a semifinal cut short by mercy rule — with a takedown and four turns, for 10 points, in a span of 27 seconds.

This time, she pulled herself up to her knees. She brought her hands, and her stars-and-stripes-painted nails, to her cheeks.

"I had goosebumps," she later said. "I was just staring at that crowd of people cheering for me. And I was like, 'I can't believe this is real. I can't believe life is real.' That little girl that started wrestling at 4 years old is still inside of me. And she's just looking out, like: What is happening right now?!?How did I go from local kids practice to the Olympic stage? It's just insane."

Elor was born and raised in Walnut Creek, California. The daughter of Israeli immigrants and the youngest of six siblings, she found wrestling while tagging along with a parent to her older brother’s practice. She was pushed toward more traditional girly sports, but all of her brothers played football or wrestled; her dad had thrown shot put in college; she was drawn toward a more physical sport, even one that was, at times, unwelcoming to girls.

Throughout her first few years in the sport, she wrestled boys. They’d complain about having to battle her. And “once she started beating up the boys, there were a lot of coaches that didn’t like it,” her mom told USA Today.

Elor also recalled Monday that many of her early coaches were “very tough on me. Not a lot of positivity in the wrestling room,” she said. As a result, “I've always believed that I was not good at wrestling,” she explained. “Even after my accomplishments, I was always very negative with myself.”

The accomplishments, though, kept accumulating. The training intensified — and incorporated judo and jiu-jitsu. High school opponents stood no chance. Elor lost, once, at the Under-17 World Championships in 2019. "I'll get it next year," she said at the time. She has not lost a match of any kind, at any weight, anywhere, since.

Born on Jan. 1, 2004, she missed the age cutoff for the 2020 Olympic trials by one day. But she set her sights on Paris 2024. And as she won, and won, and won some more, she also worked to build the self-confidence that early coaches had stolen from her. “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,” she said. She credited McMann, whom she connected with at U-20 worlds last year, with “chang[ing] my relationship with wrestling.”

“I'm truly starting to love the sport again,” Elor said. “It's been quite a journey.”

She entered the Olympics unbeaten in her last 37 international matches by an aggregate score of 322-16. The only wrench in her plans was the necessary weight-class switch. United World Wrestling offers 10 divisions at its championships; the Olympics only offer six, and not hers. So Elor chose to cut roughly eight pounds in preparation for the biggest meets of her life.

The quirk also left her technically unranked, and stuck with a first-round matchup worthy of a gold-medal bout. Elor wasn’t thrilled with the draw — but not because she feared Tosun, the top seed and 2023 world champ.

“My first thought,” Elor said, “was, Aw, I gotta wrestle her again?”

The last time they’d met, Elor pinned Tosun in 40 seconds.

She’d have preferred a new challenge. “I did want [Japanese medal favorite Nonoka Ozaki] on my side, so I could wrestle her sooner,” she said. “But, you know what? … Our paths will most likely cross. So, we'll see.”

She was wrong about that. Ozaki lost in the quarters, in a stunner. Elor, of course, did not.

She strutted out onto the Olympic stage briskly and purposely. A camera and thousands of eyes followed her every move. To many 20-year-olds, the size of the moment would be daunting; but not to Elor.

"The more people watch me, the more I feel that urge to explode and fight even harder," she explained. "And when I'm walking out and stepping onto that mat, instead of there being nerves and doubt, the second I hear everybody cheering, and I see those familiar faces, I just have this sharp focus that kicks in, and this desire to fight the second the whistle blows."

And fight she did. She went at each of her opponents, driving them out of bounds or onto their stomachs. On multiple occasions, even down by several points, they refused to go back at Elor — they preferred to concede more points, having been warned for “passivity.” By the end of each six-minute match, both Tosun and Choluj looked utterly demoralized.

And Elor, in those very same moments, flipped out of fight mode. For six minutes — or, in the case of the semifinal, for 1:44 — she is "only thinking about the match in front of me ... and fighting non-stop, getting my points, and winning.

"And then as soon as the match ends, I look around, and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh. Cherish this moment. Enjoy this moment. Feel it.'"

She is in an Olympic final, guaranteed a medal. And just about everyone here at Champ-de-Mars is sure it will be gold.