Every Former Soviet World & Olympic Men's Freestyle Medal Ever
Every Former Soviet World & Olympic Men's Freestyle Medal Ever
Every former Soviet country's men's freestyle world or Olympic medal from 1993 to today in one chart.
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The Soviet Union was the greatest men's freestyle wrestling power the world has ever seen, gobbling up countless gold medals since it first started competing in international events in 1952.
The 15 independent nations that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s continued the grand wrestling tradition, winning countless more world freestyle medals. Except we actually decided to count them.
Below is chart of every men's freestyle medal earned by former Soviet republics, in chronological order, since the countries started competing independently in 1993. Not every former Soviet republic earned world medals, but Russia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan have all had a wrester climb an Olympic or world championship podium at least once.
In light of these numbers, it's worth revisiting Brock Hite's in-depth analysis of how much tougher things have gotten for the rest of the world to climb atop the men's freestyle championship podiums. Brock summed it up best at the end of his article:
The athletes representing the United States are faced with a much more difficult task when trying to qualify for the Olympic Games or subsequently earn a medal. Keep that in mind when comparing current athletes to greats of the past that only had to compete against one Soviet wrestler at the world championships or Olympic Games.
The table in this article also does not even take into account wrestlers who have transferred from former Soviet republics and earned medals for countries outside the old USSR.
So while the USA is coming off a historic men's freestyle world team title and Russia is in the midst of a historic men's freestyle gold medal drought, history also suggests a repeat of 2017 will be no easy task for the Americans.
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