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5 Statistics from Women’s Freestyle Wrestling at the 2024 Olympics

Analyzing the Women's Freestyle takeaways from Paris

Welcome to Mat Stats! Wrestling statistics are woefully unavailable and I want to change that. Often the numbers are out there, but are tucked away in obscure corners of the internet and exist merely as raw data. My goal is to try to compile what I can find and output a newsletter that will highlight the most interesting findings. Each newsletter will cover wrestling statistics from a particular event, time frame, athlete, or team. If you like this kind of analysis, please consider subscribing to get each new edition delivered straight to your mailbox.

Amit Elor dominated her way to gold with zero (maybe one) leg attack takedowns.

Elor won gold outscoring her opponents 31-2, but none of those points came from a leg attack. Of note, in her first round match she did secure a takedown by transitioning from an inside trip to an ankle pick so this could be considered a leg attack, but that’s not how UWW quantified it. Her 6 other takedowns all came from counters or upper body techniques. By contrast, Fujinami of Japan scored all 28 of her standing-position points via leg attacks.

Japan scored a staggering 150 total match points.

The women’s freestyle powerhouse dominated the event with 110 points from standing and 40 points from parterre, considerably ahead of second-place USA’s 124 points. Notably China led the field in parterre points with 55.

Women’s Freestyle had a much higher pin rate than Men’s Freestyle

The women’s field at the Olympics combined for a 16.8% fall rate, significantly higher than the 6.8% rate in the men’s field. This difference is typical over the last 5 championships, though it is the lowest rate for women’s freestyle since the Tokyo Olympics.

Kagami won gold with only 12 points.

The 76kg gold medalist from Japan won the Olympics scoring only 12 points and yielding only 3. This was by far the lowest total for any gold medalist, second lowest being Sarah Hildebrandt with 25 points scored. She scored 6 from leg attacks, 3 from activity time, 2 from a gut wrench, and 1 from a step out.

USA’s biggest weakness was leg attack takedowns.

The USA women’s team gave up a total of 58 points in the Olympics, 20 of which came from leg attacks. Japan, on the other hand, yielded only 29 points, 2 of which came from leg attacks, and 14 of which came from counter and upper body takedowns.

Data Source: UWW