PARIS — Amit Elor looked exasperated as she walked to the edge of the mat Tuesday night, her mouth agape, her shoulders shrugged.
The moment she'd been dreaming about for her entire life was here, and she didn't really know what to do. Wave at the crowd? Collapse on the ground? Before long, her coach handed her an American flag and she started skipping in circles around the mat.
"I'm still in disbelief," Elor said shortly thereafter.
The 20-year-old might have been the only one at Champs-de-Mar Arena who was surprised that she won. She crushed her latest opponent in the 68-kilogram weight class at the 2024 Paris Olympics − Meerim Zhumanazarova of Kyrgyzstan − just like she has crushed almost everyone else who has stepped onto the mat with her over the past four-plus years.
With a 3-0 victory in the gold-medal match, Elor has now amassed 41 consecutive wins at the international level, across age divisions, dating back to 2019. The win also made her the youngest Olympic gold medalist in the history of U.S. wrestling and just the third American woman to take gold, joining two of her idols: Helen Maroulis and Tamyra Mensah-Stock.
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"She's going to break all the records," her coach Sara McMann said afterward. "I knew that before she even won her first senior championship."
It will be hard for another Team USA athlete, in any sport, to dominate their event in the same way that Elor did over the past two days. Over four matches, the Walnut Creek, California native outscored her opponents 31-2. And in her first two bouts, against reigning world champion Buse Tosun of Turkey and Wiktoria Choluj of Poland, she scored as many points (18) as opponents have scored against her, in total, since her most recent loss in 2019.
Altogether, Elor has now won an Olympic gold medal and eight world championships in three different age divisions − including senior, under-23 and under-20 titles in each of the past two years.
“She feels almost unreal to us, you know?" Elor's mother, Elana, said earlier this summer. "She’s amazing."
Elana Elor immigrated to the United States from Israel in the 1980s with Amit's late father, Yair, who died unexpectedly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Elana remembers trying to talk her youngest daughter out of wrestling, a violent sport where she would have to compete against boys, and direct her to something else − dancing, cheerleading, tennis, swimming, anything. It didn't work. Amit took up the sport when she was 4½ years old and never looked back.
“It doesn’t feel almost real, because you just go from one thing to another," Elana Elor said earlier this summer. "And yesterday she was 4 years old, like 'I want to wrestle' and I’m doing everything I can to convince her not to because it’s a boys’ sport."
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Amit said she wrestled exclusively against boys until she was 10 years old. She often felt isolated or unwanted in the gym alongside boys because, quite frankly, she beat up on them − prompting some to avoid wrestling her.
She's said this week that she also had to deal with "very tough" coaches who prompted her to question her ability on the mat.
"I've always believed that I was not good at wrestling, over the years," Elor said. "Even after my accomplishments, I was always very negative with myself. So it's taken a lot of healing and a lot of support for me to start to believe in myself and my abilities and to think of myself as a good wrestler."
And these days, "good wrestler" doesn't even come close to describing her.
Clarissa Chun, who won Olympic bronze in 2008 and is now the head coach of Iowa's women's wrestling program, has described her as a "young GOAT" who, barring injury, seems destined for the Hall of Fame. McMann, who won a silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, agreed.
"You see her in action, and you watch what she does to other people who are, on every measure, her equals − how mercilessly she just demolishes every game plan," McMann said. "It's no secret what she does. The fact that she's able to go out there and do that to everybody, and virtually never get scored on − it's untouchable."
Elor's performance in Paris was all the more impressive given the dietary changes she had to make in order to compete. She usually competes at 72 kilograms but had to drop down to a lower weight class at the Olympics, where women's wrestling has six weight classes instead of the normal 10. The switch forced her to lose about 10 pounds, which she described as "a difficult process" over the past few months.
Yet at any weight, and any age group, Elor just keeps winning. Since suffering a close loss in the under-17 world championships in 2019, she has scored nearly 20 points − which would be two victories by technical fall − for every point she's conceded.
And yet, through it all, Elor seems unaware of her own dominance. On Tuesday, she found herself looking out at the crowd, including several Israel flags in honor of her heritage, and wondering if all of this was real. How did this happen?
"I think I have a little bit of imposter syndrome," Elor said. "I still feel like that little kid who just started wrestling. But currently, I just became an Olympic champion."
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.
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