The dream of wrestling in the Summer Olympics in Paris ended with first-round losses for Dalton Roberts of Fowlerville and Malik Amine of Brighton this weekend in the World Olympic Games Qualifier in Istanbul, Turkey.
Roberts lost 11-6 to Viktor Petryk of Ukraine in a 60-kilogram Greco-Roman match. Roberts was down 7-0 after the first period.
He was officially eliminated when Petryk was pinned in the round of 16 by Virgil Bica of Sweden in the round of 16. Had Petryk made the final, Roberts would have remained alive to wrestle for an Olympic spot.
Roberts needed to finish in the top three to qualify.
Roberts won the weight class at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials last month, but needed to qualify the weight class for the Olympics by placing in the top three in Turkey. That final step was required because the U.S. hadn’t had a wrestler in that weight class place high enough in certain international competitions recently.
It was the same route Fowlerville’s Adam Coon, Roberts’ former high school teammate, had to take three years ago. Coon won the Greco-Roman 130-kilogram division at the U.S. trials, but lost in the quarterfinals in the final qualifying tournament.
Coon qualified for the Olympics this year by winning the trials. His weight class was already qualified for the Olympics.
Amine, a former Detroit Catholic Central and University of Michigan wrestler, lost his first match 11-9 to Tobias Portmann of Switzerland.
Amine wrestled for San Marino in the 74-kilogram freestyle division.
His brother, Myles, qualified for his second Olympics by winning a bronze medal in the World Championships in the fall. Myles Amine won bronze in the Tokyo Olympics.
Both brothers have citizenship to wrestle for San Marino because their great grandfather came from that small nation surrounded by Italy.
The United States had two of its five wrestlers in Turkey qualify for the Olympics.
Spencer Lee (57 kilograms) and Zain Retherford (65 kilograms) qualified in freestyle. Ellis Coleman (67 kilograms), Kamal Bey (77 kilograms) and Roberts did not qualify in Greco-Roman.
Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on X @BillKhan
This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Dalton Roberts, Malik Amine fall short in Olympic wrestling qualifier
