Amar Dhesi was awarded a junior world championship gold medal after defending freestyle champion Geno Petriashvili of Georgia was disqualified following a failed drug test.
Dhesi, who lost to Petriashvili at the FILA junior world championships in Zagreb, Croatia in August, was subsequently awarded the gold medal.
The Burnaby Central high school grad and pre-season All-American at Oregon State University became one of just a handful of Canadian wrestlers to have been named a world champion and the first in men’s freestyle since Gia Sissaouri in 2001.
“This news results in Canada winning its first male junior world wrestling in 25 years,” said Wrestling Canada Lutte executive director Tamara Medwidsky in a press release.
The world championship title followed Dhesi’s gold-medal performance at the 2014 Junior Pan American championship in Toronto in June. Dhesi was also a runner-up at the Canada Cup.
The good news comes following a recent knee injury to Dhesi in November in an exhibition match that forced the Canadian to sit out his sophomore season at Oregon State as a redshirt.
As a starting freshman at State, Dhesi finished 2014 with a 27-10 record, placing second at the Reno Tournament of Champions and holding a top-20 national ranking for most of the season.
Dhesi also placed runner-up at the Pac-12 conference championships – his first runner-up title – earning an automatic entry into the nationals, where he was seeded 16th and won two of his four bouts.
Dhesi had won three consecutive matches leading up to the world championship final, including a come-from-behind 7-6 decision in the final minute against American rival Adam Coon of Michigan in the semifinal.
Coon was Dhesi’s opponent in the final at the USA junior nationals in 2013, becoming the only Canadian to win the tournament in 20 years.
