The women’s wrestling was introduced in the Olympics in 2004. Since its inception to the Summer Games, many rivalries brewed in this division and one such is between Canada’s Olympics champ Erica Wiebe and the USA’ five-time world champion Adeline Gray. What Sadulaev-Snyder rivalry is to Men’s freestyle, Gray-Wiebe rivalry is to women’s wrestling.
The Canada wrestler on many occasions has expressed her love to get challenged. Be it on the mat or in real life, wrestling in the unknown and emerging victorious is her favourite past-time. Wiebe is was the third Canadian champion ever in wrestling at the Olympics, and second Canadian woman to win gold after Carol Huynh.
She is the two-time Commonwealth Games Champion and two-time Pan American Championship medallist. Besides this, she also won the recently held Pan American Olympic Qualifiers and qualified for the Tokyo Games in the 76kg weight class.
Adeline Gray, on the other hand, is regarded as the best active wrestler in women’s wrestling. She is two-time Pan American Champion and one-time silver medallist. She is also the five-time world champion. And owing to her 2019 gold medal finish she qualified the USA for the Summer Games.
Both the wrestlers have met on two occasions with Gray emerging victorious each time.
Here is the glimpse of the two wrestling battles between Erica Wiebe and Adeline Gray:
-2018 World Championships, Budapest:
Both Gray and Wiebe were the favourites to reach the finals. But instead of the last stage, the duo clashed in the semi-finals. In a hard-fought match, Wiebe had opened the scoring by securing a point due to passivity. But with less than 20 seconds to the first half, the US wrestler quickly bagged two points by throwing Wiebe out of the safe zone.
The second half was more competitive, with none of the wrestler able to execute an attack. The only point scored in the last three minutes was by Gray through passivity. She eventually went on to win the match 3-1.
-2019 Pan American Championships, Buenos Aires:
This time the two met in the quarter-finals of the continental championship held in Argentina. Unlike their previous encounter, the match ended with Gray winning on technical superiority.