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Vegas Worlds End With Two Olympic Weight Qualifications for Canada

September 13, 2015

(Las Vegas, USA) –  With the 2015 WorldChampionships in Las Vegas having come to an end, two Canadian weight-classes have been qualified for the 2016 Olympics and the Canadian team has been able to evaluate the top international competition by weight-class from hundreds of countries entered.

“With the Olympics next year, and weight class qualifications on the line, the competition here in Las Vegas was extremely high, all countries sent their best,” says Wrestling Canada Lutte Executive Director Tamara Medwidsky. “We accomplished our goals of qualifying at least two weight-classes and by continuing our streak of at least one medal at the senior World Championships since 2003, we now take what we learned and prepare for our trials and future qualification events to qualify more.”

Weight classes now qualified for the Rio Olympic Summer Games, include Genevieve Morrison’s 48KG quarter-final. The Dinos Wrestling Club wrestler, who was proud to accomplish that goal went on to win Canada’s medal at these World Championships. Braxton Stone-Papadopoulos, qualified the second weight-class (63KG) for the Olympics by winning her quarter-final match in Vegas and finished the match with a fist-pump in the air knowing she had accomplished this for Canada.

For Las Vegas, Canadian entries included eight women’s wrestling entries, eight men’s freestyle entries and two Greco-Roman entries. The Canadian team will now prepare for the Canadian Wrestling Trials taking place December 4-6, 2015 in Sherwood Park, Alberta. Following the trials, Canada will work to qualify additional weight classes at the Continental qualifier events.

On the mats for the final day of the World Championships were four Canadian men’s freestyle weight classes including Korey Jarvis (125KG) of Guelph, at 74KG Jevon Balfour (Brock WC), John Pineda (57KG) from the Burnaby Mountain Wrestling Club and Team Impact’s Cruiz Manning (70KG).

Following the day’s preliminary rounds, Men’s National Coach Gia Sissaouri spoke of the experience required to win.

“Those standing on the podiums here at Worlds have the international experience to dominate in every way,” says Sissaouri. “The men’s team know we need to have more commitment from the team. Our athletes are relatively young experience-wise, and we have identified that our gap is our international preparation. We need to wrestle the best more to achieve better performances.”

Jevon Balfour met Oleg Zakharevych of the Ukraine in the 74KG qualification round on mat A. Balfour earned the first point two points and was aggressive from the start, but the Ukrainian wrestler came back steady to take the match 7-2. American favourite Jordan Burroughs went on to beat Zakharevych.

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For 57KG, in the qualification round John Pineda faced Yaparathna Mudeyanselage (SRI). Pineda confidently beat Mudeyanselage (10-0). In his next bout, Pineda met Adama Diatta of Senegal. Diatta won 6-2 over Pineda.

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In the 70KG round of sixteen, Cruiz Manning met Semen Radulov of the Ukraine but lost 10-0.

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Korey Jarvis faced Geno Petrriashvili of Georgia on mat D in the 125KG round of 16. The bout ended 10-0 for the Georgian athlete.

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