Helen Maroulis can strengthen case for greatest U.S. women’s wrestler with success in Paris

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PARIS (AP) — As Helen Maroulis’ career winds down, she has a perfect opportunity to strengthen her case for being the best women’s wrestler in U.S. history.

Maroulis was the first American woman to win a gold medal back in 2016, when she upset three-time gold medalist Saori Yoshida in the 53-kilogram final in Rio de Janeiro. She came back to earn bronze at 57 kg in Tokyo, despite numerous injuries in the lead-up to those Games. She’s a three-time world champion with seven world championship medals.

Now 32, she could become the first U.S. woman to win gold twice and the first to claim three Olympic medals. She’s currently the only one with two Olympic medals and the first to make three Olympic teams. She begins her Paris Games on Thursday, and the medal round for 57kg is on Friday.

Days ahead of this year’s competition, she was asked if she thinks this will be her final Olympics and she responded: “I don’t know, but I think so.” She said when she visited family in Greece for her 30th birthday back in 2022, her grandmother and her father told her they wanted her to settle down.

“I told them, ‘I think it’s easier to go for a gold medal than find a husband,’ and we made a compromise,” she said. “So, here I am wrestling.”

Adeline Gray is the only American woman who can compete with Maroulis’ resume. Gray is a six-time world champion who earned a silver medal at 76 kg in Tokyo. She nearly made it to Paris, but she lost to Kennedy Blades at the U.S. Olympic Trials in April.

If this is it, Maroulis has achieved most of her goals. But ever the competitor, she remembers her perceived failures vividly, too. She’s still disappointed about coming up short in 2021.

“I wanted to experience what it would be like to come back and be the returning champion, what kind of pressure that would be to win two gold medals, and I didn’t achieve that,” she said.

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She earned another opportunity by defeating Jacarra Winchester, a Tokyo Olympian, at the U.S. trials.

Maroulis is seeded fifth in her class. The top seed is three-time world champion Tsugumi Sakurai of Japan. No. 2 seed Anastasia Nichita of Moldova was a world champion at 59 kg in 2022. Nigeria’s Odunayo Adekuoroye is the No. 3 seed, and Poland’s Anehlina Lysak, the No. 4 seed, is at her third Olympics.

But U.S. women’s coach Terry Steiner said Maroulis is capable.

“When Helen’s hitting at all cylinders, she’s very hard to deal with for anyone,” he said. “She’s another one of these people that just has generational talent. She is a gamer. Helen — when the lights are on, she performs. And she, almost at this point in her career, it has to be an event like the Olympic Games or the world championships to really get the best out of her. But she definitely rises to the occasion.”

Maroulis also has another chance to help shape the team’s younger members. She is the oldest member of the team at the Olympics — a squad that includes 20-year-olds Blades and Amit Elor.

Steiner said Maroulis values her role as a mentor for wrestlers in a program that has emerged as a world power.

“She is a leader, and she knows that,” he said. “And she knows that the rest of her team is also looking her way. And so I think that helps her actually. I don’t think it hinders her at all. I think she kind of wants to be in that in that moment or that spot with the rest of the group. So, I think she has high expectations for herself. I think the team has expectations for her as well.”