By Beau Dure, USATODAY.com<\/p>\n
Japanese wrestler Kyoko Hamaguchi has won five world titles. Coming into the 158.5-pound final against Hamaguchi in Budapest, Iris Smith had none.<\/p>\n
Smith had only been to the World Championships once before ” in 2000. She earned a spot again in 2001 but missed the tournament to attend basic training in the Army, her USA Wrestling bio says. Now a sergeant in the Army, she has continued to wrestle and has a couple of international wins.<\/p>\n
None bigger than this.<\/p>\n
Smith stunned Hamaguchi with a three-point takedown in the first period and held on to win the period 3-1. She took the lead in the second period with a one-point move and was threatening to close out the match before Hamaguch fought back with a point to win the period.<\/p>\n
In the tense third period, Smith and Hamaguchi waited through a video replay that awarded a point to the American. Smith shut out the five-time champion the rest of the way and won her first world title.<\/p>\n
For her efforts, Smith is USATODAY.com’s U.S. Olympic Athlete of the Week.<\/p>\n
The U.S. finished second in the medal count, thanks to six bronze-medal winners (freestyle unless noted): Justin Ruiz (211.5, Greco-Roman), Joe Williams (163), Tolly Thompson (264.5), Sally Roberts (130), Sara McMann (138.75), Katie Downing (147.5).<\/p>\n
Other wrestlers in the championships: Mo Lawal (7th, 185), Jenny Wong (7th, 105.5), Stephanie Murata (7th, 112.25), Joe Warren (9th, 132, Greco-Roman), Sammie Henson (second round, 121), Daniel Cormier (second round, 211.5), Lindsey Durlacher (second round, 121, Greco-Roman), Dremiel Byers (second round, 264.5, Greco-Roman), Tina George (second round, 121), Michael Lightner (first round, 132), Chris Bono (first round, 145.5), Harry Lester (first round, 145.5, Greco-Roman), T.C. Dantzler (first round, 163, Greco-Roman), Brad Vering (first round, 185, Greco-Roman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Beau Dure, USATODAY.com Japanese wrestler Kyoko Hamaguchi has won five world titles. Coming into the 158.5-pound final against Hamaguchi in Budapest, Iris Smith had none. Smith had only been to the World Championships once before ” in 2000. She earned a spot again in 2001 but missed the tournament to attend basic training in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-qP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}