Willie Saylor of MatScouts wins journalist champion picks contest for 2024 Olympic wrestling

You would think that selecting champions would be an easy task for journalists who cover the sport. The 2024 international journalist champion pick contest only asked for a prediction of who would stand on the top of the podium at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.

With 18 weight classes, you might think that the winning selection should be high number. A total of 21 journalists from four different nations turned in their predictions prior to the first day of competition. Wrestling was held at the Champ-de-Mars Arena in Paris, August 5-11. But the winning predictors were not even able to select half of the champions this year.

The Olympic Games continues to be a very unpredictable event, which was once again the case in 2024.

Willie Saylor of MatScouts (USA) and Jon Kozak of FloWrestling (USA) were tied with the most correct selections with eight.

Saylor had three women champions, Akari Fujinami of Japan (53 kg), Tsugumi Sakurai of Japan (57 kg) and Amit Elor of the USA (68 kg), three Greco-Roman champions, Kenchiro Fumita of Japan (60 kg), Mohammad Saravi of Iran (97 kg) and Mijian Lopez of Cuba (130 kg), plus two men’s freestyle champions, Rei Higuchi of Japan (56 kg) and Akhmed Tazhudinov of Bahrain (97 kg). Saylor was the only journalist to select three Greco-Roman champions.

Kozak had the most women’s freestyle champions of any participant with five: Fujimani, Sakuri and Elor, plus Sakura Motoki of Japan (62 kg) and Yuka Kagami of Japan (76 kg). He also had two Greco-Roman champions correct, Saravi and Lopez, plus one men’s freestyle champion, Tazhudinov.

For the first time in ages, the king of the predictions for a USA Wrestling journalist contest was determined via tie-breaker, which in this case was the top five nations based upon medal count. USA Wrestling uses total medal count as the determining factor, not number of gold medalists.

Saylor was able to predict three of the five top medal producing teams. He correctly selected Japan in first (with 11 medals). He placed the United States in second, which actually finished third (with 7 medals). He put Iran in third, which actually finished second (with 8 medals).

Kozak had two of the top five programs in his tiebreaker. He placed the USA in first, which actually placed third. He also had Japan in second, which finished first.

After determining the champion (Saylor), tie breakers will not be used to sort out any other ties in the contest.

There were six journalists with six correct answers: Dan Fickel (Wrestling USA-USA), Ikuo Higuchi (Japan Wrestling Federation-JPN), Jack Hurley (The Fight Site-USA), Richard Mann (InterMat-USA), Earl Smith (Intermat-USA) and Andrew Spey (FloWrestling-USA).

Men’s freestyle was the style that confounded the journalists, as no journalist had more than two of the men’s freestyle Olympic champions selected.

There were six 2024 Olympic champions in which none of the 21 journalists selected, which led to the low number of champion picks by the entire group of journalists. They were Kotaro Kiyooka of Japan (65 kg men’s freestyle), Razambek Jamalov of Uzbekistan (74 kg men’s freestyle), Magomed Ramazanov of Bulgaria (86 kg men’s freestyle), Geno Petriashvili of Georgia (125 kg men’s freestyle), Saeid Esmaeili of Iran (67 kg Greco-Roman) and Semen Novikov of Bulgaria (87 kg Greco-Roman)

Click here for all of the International Journalist Picks for Paris

2024 International Journalist champion picks for 2024 Olympic wrestling

8 – Willie Saylor (MatScouts), won tiebreaker

8 – Jon Kozak (FloWrestling-USA) lost tiebreaker

6 – Dan Fickel (Wrestling USA-USA), Ikuo Higuchi (Japan Wrestling Federation-JPN), Jack Hurley (The Fight Site-USA), Richard Mann (InterMat-USA), Earl Smith (Intermat-USA), Andrew Spey (FloWrestling-USA)

5 – Sina Etemadi (Super Fan-USA), Andy Mason (Hagerstown Herald Mail-USA), David Mirikitani (Weighing In-USA), Mark Ostrander (Weighing In-USA), Steve Rotstein (Pittsburgh Union Progress-USA), Byambaa Tsagaanbaatar (Mongolia)

4 – Gary Abbott (USA Wrestling), Tivan Avanian (Russia), Cam Drury (Indiana Mat-USA), Tom Elling (Pennsylvania Roundup-USA)

3 – Justin Barrasso (Sports Illustrated-USA)

2 – Justin Hoch (JHoch.com-USA)

1 – John Johnson (Amateur Wrestling News-USA)