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Female wrestler captures bronze:
turkishdailynews.com.tr 7/8/06
Turkish wrestler Mine Yosmaoglu won a bronze medal at the 10th European Junior Women's Wrestling Championships in Hungary on Thursday. Yosmaoglu, competing in the 63 kilogram category, overcame her Australian opponent Stephaine Majerhofer in the first, and swept past Polish Aldona Haniszewska in the second round. The Turkish wrestlers eventually gave way to Lithuanian Laura Skujina in the third round, but overcame her Italian counterpart Simona Carboni to reach the bronze medal. Fellow wrestlers Elçin Demirtas and Leyla Metin were eliminated in the first round, but the team remain hopeful about Simge Yilmaz, who will take to the mat in the 67 kilogram division.
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Guelph Wrestling Club star wins gold at Canada Cup when Chinese wrestler withdraws
DANIEL DALE
GUELPH (Jul 10, 2006)
Ohenewa Akuffo was pumped. She was going to face the Olympic champion in her weight class. In the finals of her home tournament. With her parents, brother, and nephew, who rarely get to see her wrestle, in the stands.
Then Xu Wang got - ahem - "injured."
Citing a mysterious ailment, China's Wang, who won gold in Athens in 2004, withdrew from the women's 72-kilogram division of the Canada Cup of International Wrestling just before she had to wrestle Akuffo Saturday afternoon at the Guelph Sports and Entertainment Centre.
Wang breezed through her semifinal match Saturday morning.
"I watched her semifinal and she wasn't hurt there," said Dave Mair, one of Akuffo's coaches with the Guelph Wrestling Club, with a hearty laugh. "So maybe she hurt herself on the way out here."
Like Mair, Akuffo suspected that Wang pulled out in order to avoid facing her before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Still, Wang traveled 14 hours from Beijing to concede a title.
"You're going to come all the way from China and do that?" Akuffo said, laughing. "You have a long flight!"
Akuffo, Canada's 72-kilogram women's champion, has scared off opponents before.
"We were in Tokyo [in October] for an international training camp and five days into the training camp nobody would wrestle her anymore," Mair said. "She's pretty dominating."
Akuffo wasn't thrilled with her victory-by-default. "I didn't win it the way I wanted to," she said. "I really wanted to wrestle her. I'm really disappointed to win this way."
Still, said Mair, it says something about Akuffo's international standing that an opponent of Wang's calibre wouldn't face her.
Akuffo, who missed last year's Canada Cup with a concussion, beat five-time world champion Kyoko Hamaguchi of Japan in the World Cup tournament in May.
"When you have an Olympic champion decide not to fight you, and they come all the way from Beijing, I guess it's a compliment," Mair said.
Wang was not available for comment.
In the men's 74-kg finals, Guelph's Zoltan Hunyady lost 3-0, 3-0 to New York's Ramico Blackmon. Hunyady, who quickly surrendered points in each round, never had a chance to score after Blackmon began wrestling conservatively to protect his lead.
"Tactically, he was really strong, what can I say," said Hunyady, a national champion in 2003 and 2005 and a Canada Cup winner in 2001. "Once he got up, he was good at stalling. So it didn't work out like I'd hoped."
The GWC's Aristoteles Panzo lost in the semifinals of the men's 60-kg division.
Two GWC wrestlers made the finals in the Pre-Junior Invitational Tournament that accompanied the senior-level Cup.
Alan Moffat beat Alberta's Drew Belanger to win the 58-kg weight class, while Guelph's Cody Airdrie fell to Saskatchewan's Ryan Myrfield in the 63-kg division.