LONDON, England — The Cliff Keen Wrestling Club’s Jake Herbert suffered a pair of controversial losses in his Olympic Games debut to finish one win short of the bronze-medal match on Saturday (Aug. 11) at ExCeL North Arena 2. Herbert posted a 1-2 record in the 84kg/185-pound freestyle division.
Herbert was eliminated from the competition after falling to Turkey’s Ibrahim Bolukasi, 1-0, 1-4, 5-4, in his first repechage bout. The American wrestler turned Bolukasi in the third period and was holding him on his back for points for about 30 seconds, but then Bolukasi was inexplicably awarded three points in the exchange.
“I’m very disappointed,” Herbert said of the match. “You turn a guy and hold him on his back and they give him three points for it. That’s tough for anybody to come back from. They just gave it to him. The guy put two hands on my head which is illegal, and they end up giving him three points. It stinks. The same thing happened to me in the quarters. I don’t understand it.”
Herbert, a 2009 World silver medalist, lost an earlier controversial, and bizarre, match to returning World champion Sharif Sharifov of Azerbaijan in the quarterfinals where he had points taken away.
Sharifov won the first period 4-1 before shooting in on a double-leg attack in the second. Herbert countered and flipped Sharifov through onto his back, and the referee signaled three points to Herbert. The action continued and another flurry followed where Sharifov appeared to have exposed Herbert’s back to the mat.
After that exchange, no points were put on the scoreboard and the U.S. challenged the call. After a pair of reviews, Sharifov was given six points and Herbert none in the two exchanges although the jury initially gave Herbert three. The jury is supposed to have the final say in those situations.
Those rulings gave Sharifov the win by technical fall 6-0, with just 43 seconds elapsed in the two-minute period.
“It all happened so fast,” said CKWC coach Sean Bormet. “We were trying to get clarification on the score at first. It seemed like the officials went back and forth on what the points would be. There is nothing you can do about it. It’s hard because they didn’t have the score on the board. It’s disappointing. It looked like Jake had the momentum and took his opponent over for three points, but the refs don’t always see it the way we do. We thought it should have been 3-2 in favor of us.”
U.S. coach Zeke Jones was given a yellow card, considered a warning in international wrestling, for disputing the call.
Herbert had beaten Sharifov in the 2009 Worlds en route to winning a silver medal.
Herbert dropped the first period before topping Cuba’s Humberto Arencibia, 1-4, 8-0, 1-1 in the first round. Herbert powered in on a leg attack and finished for a takedown with 11 seconds left in the third period. He won the period by virtue of scoring last.
