Adeline Gray, a six-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist, returned from having twins last July to make the U.S. wrestling team for September’s world championships.
Gray, 32, swept 19-year-old Kennedy Blades in a best-of-three series for the 76kg spot at Saturday’s Final X, the event that determines most of the world team across men’s and women’s freestyle and Greco-Roman. On April 29, Blades earned a 10-point mercy-rule win over Gray at the U.S. Open in Gray’s first competition since childbirth.
“It’s like every three weeks it’s a little bit more used to my body,” Gray, who returned to training in January while recovering from an ab separation from the pregnancy, said last month after winning a tournament to qualify for Final X. “There’s pieces of wrestling that you have to put together. It’s just going to take me a little bit of time.”
Every active male U.S. Olympic gold medalist also made the world team except for Jordan Burroughs, who was ousted by Chance Marsteller 8-3 in their third and deciding 79kg match. Burroughs. who won the opening match in the best-of-three series, saw his streak of world championship teams end at nine, dating to his first full freestyle season in 2011.
Burroughs, 34, earned a medal at all of those world championships, including six golds, plus his 2012 Olympic gold, to break the record for most global titles for a U.S. wrestler.
Burroughs has competed in the non-Olympic 79kg division since missing the Tokyo Olympic team in his familiar 74kg class. Now, Burroughs must move back to an Olympic weight ahead of the April Olympic Trials, where he may have to dethrone four-time world champion Kyle Dake to make the team for Paris.
Olympic champs who made the world team: Kyle Snyder (who made it when J’den Cox forfeited due to injury), Gable Steveson (who swept Mason Parris) and David Taylor (who swept Aaron Brooks).
Gray was the most decorated woman to qualify Saturday. Tokyo Olympic champion Tamyra Mensah-Stock announced her retirement from wrestling last month to join the WWE. Rio Olympic champion Helen Maroulis was granted a delay for her series with Xochitl Mota-Pettis for medical reasons.
Past moms to make world teams include Hall of Famers Tricia Saunders and Kristie Davis, who both won multiple world titles as moms. Saunders and Davis competed before women’s wrestling was added to the Olympics in 2004.
A USA Wrestling spokesperson could not think of a mom who has made an Olympic team, but couldn’t say for sure, when asked in April. At next April’s Olympic Trials, Gray can achieve the feat while also bidding to break the record for oldest female U.S. Olympic wrestler by nearly three years.
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