Amit Elor celebrates after winning gold in the women's freestyle 68kg wrestling event at the Paris Olympic Games.
CNN —
Amit Elor runs around the wrestling ring holding aloft a US flag, jumping with joy every so often. She may only be 20 years old, but she has the world at her feet.
Elor has just won Olympic gold in the women’s freestyle 68kg wrestling event, beating Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova in Tuesday’s final on points 3-0 in Paris.
In doing so, she became the US’ youngest ever wrestler to win gold.
While her celebrations might bely the confidence of someone who expects to be where she is, Elor was frank in her assessment of her emotions in the immediate aftermath.
“I’m still in disbelief. I think I have a little bit of impostor syndrome,” Elor said. “Because, like I said [earlier], I still feel like that little kid who just started wrestling, but I just became an Olympic champion.”
She added: “It was one of the best moments in my life. I think I’m going to remember it for my entire life. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.”
Her achievements are made even more astonishing given that she’s competing out of her normal weight class.
She made her name in the 72kg weight class, winning the 2022 World Wrestling Championships – becoming the youngest US wrestler, male or female, world champion aged 18 – before successfully defending her crown a year later.
The 72kg weight class isn’t part of the Olympic Games though, meaning she needed to cut down to compete. And she has adjusted to life at a lighter weight seamlessly.
She was seen as a contender for the Olympic gold, but no one could have predicted the emphatic nature in which she has done so. She comfortably won her first two matches with a combined score of 18-2 before going one better and beating North Korea’s Pak Sol Gum in the semifinal in just one minute and 44 seconds.
Over the course of her tournament, she dropped just two points on the way to gold. Working on her mental approach to wrestling with the help of her coach Valentin Kalika, she says, has helped her the most.
“I think the No. 1 thing that’s helped me develop mentally has been experience,” she said. “For the past two years, I’ve done three world championships in one summer.
“Those experiences have not only helped me stay focused and solid under pressure, they’ve also helped me improve as a wrestler and as a person.”
Elor (red) competes with Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova (blue) in the women's freestyle 68kg gold medal match at Champs-de-Mars Arena.
But Elor’s relationship with wrestling hasn’t always been so smooth. She remembers a time during the Covid-19 pandemic where she fell out of love with the sport and it “went from being the best part of my day to being a task that I wasn’t always looking forward to.
“It’s one of the hardest – if not the hardest – sport out there. When you do something so difficult, it’s hard to remember why you do it and to still enjoy the process. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, but I did not stop, I kept going. Throughout meeting the right people, I have learned to love it again.”
Elor has had to deal with loss in her family too. In 2018, her brother Oshry was killed during an apparent marijuana robbery, according to CNN affiliate KGO. Her father also died in 2022.
After her victory on Tuesday, Elor explained that those tough times make the success even more seismic.
“And when I experience something like [winning Olympic gold], it just reminds me that everything is worth it. All the hard days, the grind, it’s all worth it for moments like these.”
Now, as an Olympic gold medalist, a record breaker and a two-time world champion, Elor looms large over the wrestling world.
According to the United World Wrestling, prior to the gold medal match in Paris, Elor had accumulated 42 wins since 2019, outscoring her opponents 375-19 in the past five years.
And for the California native, she is already looking ahead to four years’ time.
“Other than becoming an Olympic champion, my biggest dream of all time is to go to the 2028 Olympics because I’m from California. California is my favorite place to live – I was born and raised in California,” she said.
“To have the opportunity to compete and represent not only my country, but my state, and to compete in my own state, is incredible. I have been excited for that ever since I heard about it.”
