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Aleksandr
Karelin
Greco-Roman wrestling, a sport that descends from the Greek and Roman Antiquity, was included in the programme of the modern Olympic Games  as early as from the first organization in 1896. A hundred years later, in 1996, in the Olympic Games of Atlanta, wrestling found in Aleksandr Karelin its pre-eminent representative, as the Russian wrestler was consolidating his prevalence in the heavyweight category. With this victory Karelin became the first wrestler, both in the freestyle and the Greco-Roman events, to win a gold medal in three Olympic organizations in a row.
Aleksandr Karelin was born in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, on 19 September 1967. He took up wrestling in his school years, urged by his trainer Victor Kusnetzov, who saw in the physique of young Karelin a vast range of possibilities for learning the wrestling technique. At the age of 15 he participated for the first time in teenage games. However, the result was not positive because he broke his arm. Although such a serious injury could have interrupted prematurely his athletic course, two years later Karelin won the first place in the youth world championship, thus securing his participation in the wrestling team of the Soviet Union.
The 1988 Seoul Olympics was the first major sports organization in which he participated. His victory in the final was impressive in a way that would distinguish him from all the other wrestlers of his category. His opponent was the Bulgarian Rangel Gerovski. Thirty seconds before the end of the match Karelin was ahead in the score by 3-0. Instead of trying to secure the gold medal by stalling, he decided to pursue a more offensive tactic. So, he used a lock on his opponent and then took him down, after having lifted him high above his body. This difficult lock, which is rarely attempted by athletes of this division (heavyweight), gave Karelin five more points and a spectacular victory. Thenceforth, this lock became one of the Russian wrestler's favourites and the dread of his opponents.
Over the following years Karelin became the incontestable master of the sport. He won 9 world championships (1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999) and 12 European, as well as the gold medal in the Olympic Games of Barcelona in 1992 and of Atlanta in 1996. He was undefeatable for 14 years (1986-2000), and none of his opponents could win a point against Karelin until the final in the Sydney Olympics. In that game he lost his first point since 1993 and eventually lost the game by 1-0, due to a penalty point for foul play. So he missed the opportunity to join with Carl Lewis, Al Oerter and Paul Elvstrom, the only athletes in the history of the Olympics to win a gold medal in the same event in four consecutive Olympic organizations.
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