By David King
There’s few who can say at age 20 that they are the best in the world, but Walnut Creek native, Amit Elor, can having walked away with what appears to have been an easy gold medal at the Paris Olympics in the 68kg freestyle women’s wrestling division.
Walnut Creek, the County, neighbors, friends, local gyms, schools, all seek to be a part of her success and embrace that connection. Even LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Snoop Dogg had their photos taken individually with Elor.
It wasn’t that she won the gold medal, this area has had its share of Olympic medalists. It’s that she did it with such mastery. Given the successes in sports of Stanford and UC Berkely, the Bay Area has always been mainlining athletes to the Olympics. In Paris, Central County was well represented by sending 10 athletes. But not since the Gold medal performances of Walnut Creek Aquanauts and Concord’s Natalie Coughlin has there been such local elation over our home-grown champions.
Elor had to drop from her usual wrestling class from 72kg (where she has won eight World Championships in the last three years) to 68kg (about 9 pounds) in order to compete. She entered her bracket as unseeded because she had not won any titles at that weight class. She drew the #1 seed, World Champion from Türkiye, Buse Cavusoglu Tosun. Elor easily won 10-2. Tosun eventually took home the bronze medal. Elor won the rest of her matches, 8-0, 10-0 and was in complete control of her final’s opponent from Kyrgyzstan, Meerim Zhumanazarova, despite the lower score of 3-0. Completing a domination over Olympic and World Champion opponents by a combined score of 31-2!
Elor’s history of success is equally amazing. In 2018-19, as a freshman at College Park High, she went undefeated winning the CIF State Title. From there she entered home studies through the Mount Diablo Unified School District Horizons independent study program to pursue a higher level of training, which required much traveling across the world.
Today, Elor is virtually invincible. She is on an 83-match win streak, and in National/International competition has only lost once, when she won a bronze medal in Sofia, Bulgaria at U17.
How did she feel about that lone loss?
“It was my very first World Championships competition, Cadet World 2019. And you don’t know what to expect except you’re going to try your absolute best. I did, and I ended up with a bronze.
Back then, it wasn’t like I had this undefeated win streak that I have now. Of course, I was disappointed by my loss, but it’s not the same as if I were to lose right now after such a long win streak.
“But being in the wrestling world, we all the time see these upsets happening. We had a bunch of them happen at the Olympics. Things happen. We can get injured and sick. So, it’s pretty cool that I have a win streak, but at the end of the day, we all need to prepare for our competitions because things happen.
“Every single person who was in my bracket was a very excellent wrestler with their own challenges. In general, wrestling is always so much harder than it looks. There’s a lot of strength and struggle that happens underneath that you can’t see. Sometimes it just looks like people have their hands on each other, but they’re constantly using their whole body to fight for position and look for openings and moves and attacks.”
What may have been tougher than competing in the Olympics is that Elor returned to the States and had to battle pneumonia. She beat that as well. I spoke with Elor, still nursing a mild cough, while she was on her way to the beach in Southern California. She had traveled there to watch her boyfriend Mica Galvao, a jiu-jitsu world champion, conduct some clinics.
Having won eight World Championships, why are the Olympics more exciting?
“The world championship is the biggest competition within our sport. But the Olympics happens every four years, and the entire world stops what they’re doing for two weeks and tunes in to watch all of the best athletes in the world compete. So, it’s 100 times cooler than the world championships because people who are not from the sport of wrestling will tune in and watch wrestling. They’ll discover wrestling. The audience and support we receive from the Olympics is day and night difference than the world championships. Many people tell me that they didn’t know anything about wrestling and now they’re a huge fan of the sport. Just knowing that is so cool to hear.”
Elor says her next major wrestling goal is to be a gold medalist at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Is hosting clinics in your future?
“It’s something I’ve only started recently. My first ones were at the end of 2023, but I really hope to make it more of a profession sharing wrestling, teaching wrestling to kids and youths. I’ve received a lot of messages about setting up clinics all over the place. For now, it’s just too much for me.”
No one seems to score on you, what’s been your toughest match?
“The most I’ve given up was four points. The start of 2024 has been a huge struggle for me because I had to drop from 72 kilos to 68. My first few competitions at 68kg, I performed poorly even though I won. My performance was poor because my weight cut to 68kg was not done correctly. I would always feel bad and very sluggish. I accumulated little injuries.
“In February, I was in the Olympic qualifier in Acapulco. At the start of one of the matches, I got thrown to my back in the beginning of the competition. But after that, I kept accumulating points and ended up winning. I’d say that was probably the worst. But heading into the Olympic trials and the Olympics, things did not seem very bright because of how much I was struggling.
“It just goes to show that if you don’t give up and keep trying, things can work out. It turns out for me, the preparation for the Olympics was the best that I’ve ever done. I felt amazing. My body and all the little injuries I had were finally going away. My body was healing. I felt good and energetic.”
Elor will not be competing again until 2025, but in the meantime is considering doing some clinics to give back to the community.
If you didn’t know Elor, you would think she must just be a beast. But there is a dichotomy of her world dominance over women in wrestling and her youthful, playful persona in everyday life. She admitted she has some aspirations and experience in acting and performing. She is in fact quite endearing and is wearing her notoriety like a star. Maybe Marvel Entertainment will take notice. For now, her focus is still on wrestling.
“I love wrestling. I don’t see why I would ever not wrestle.”
Amit’s Post Olympic Interview.
