Helen Maroulis gets bronze, becomes 1st American woman to win 3 Olympic wrestling medals

PARIS — Helen Maroulis emphatically pushed her name back atop the list of U.S. women’s Olympic wrestling medalists.

Maroulis pinned Canada’s Hannah Taylor in 24 seconds to claim bronze medal in the 57-kilogram freestyle category on Friday. She is the first American woman to claim three Olympic medals, following her gold in Rio de Janeiro and her bronze in Tokyo.

Maroulis, 32, said as recently as Thursday she thought she was going to retire. Now, she’s not sure what she’ll do.

“I didn’t want to just, like, go out there and wrestle scared … I really wanted to wrestle my very best,” she said. “And if is this is the last memory I have of myself on the mat, I wanted it to be something beautiful.”

The only American woman to make three Olympic teams, Maroulis broke the tie of two Olympic medals she shared with Sarah Hildebrandt, who won gold earlier in the week. No other American woman has more than one Olympic medal.

Maroulis wasn’t even sure she’d wrestle in Tokyo in 2021 after issues with concussions. Her head cleared up days before competition began, and she was pleasantly surprised to earn bronze.

“I felt like I was back to my old self, got to wrestle the way that I always wanted to, and I was like, ‘Man, this is crazy. Like, why stop now?’” she said.

She continued to have success, leading her to expect more this time. She had hoped to become the first American woman to win two gold medals, and she was disappointed when she lost her semifinal 10-4 to the eventual gold medalist, Japan’s Sakurai Tsugumi.

She was dominant Friday, and now, she’s got some thinking to do.

“It’s not that I’m holding on because of anything competitively or accolades,” she said through tears. “It’s like, I really do just like love what I get to do, you know?”