Andy Bisek makes U.S. Greco-Roman team at 75 kilograms

IOWA CITY – After winning his first match at Sunday's Olympic wrestling trials, Andy Bisek could not stop his mind from racing. One more victory would put the Chaska native on the U.S. team for the Rio Summer Games, and he started to think about how it was going to feel.

Bisek pictured what he would do on the mat at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, what he would say in postmatch interviews, how the crowd would react. Then he made it come to life. Bisek, 29, swept Geordan Speiller in the Greco-Roman 75-kilogram class to make the U.S. Olympic team, finally chasing down a long-held dream.

Last September, Bisek won a bronze medal at the world championships — his second in a row — to qualify the U.S. for the Rio Olympics at his weight class. That allowed him to bypass the preliminary rounds Sunday and advance directly to the best-of-three finals. He followed a 6-2 victory with a 4-0 shutout, receiving a standing ovation from a crowd of 11,164 as he joined eight other wrestlers bound for the Summer Games.

"I can't count the number of scenarios that happened in my head since September,'' Bisek said. "After the world championships, knowing I had the spot qualified, I was thinking about it day in and day out.

"To get it done, to be the guy on this stage, is incredible.''

World championships gold medalists Jordan Burroughs (74 kg freestyle), Adeline Gray (75 kg women's freestyle) and Kyle Snyder (97 kg freestyle) also advanced straight to Sunday's finals. Gray and Burroughs swept their matches to make the Olympic team, and Snyder won in three.

Other Sunday winners who are guaranteed to compete in Rio are Robby Smith (130 kg Greco-Roman) and Daniel Dennis (57 kg freestyle). Three of Saturday's victors — Tervel Dlagnev (125 kg freestyle), Ben Provisor (85 kg Greco-Roman) and Elena Pirozhkova (63 kg women's) — also are qualified. The nine trials winners whose weights are not qualified for Rio, including Joe Rau of the Minneapolis Storm (98 kg Greco-Roman), must compete at qualifiers in Mongolia and Turkey.

A first-round loss at the 2012 Olympic trials taught him to take nothing for granted. Speiller beat current Storm wrestler Alec Ortiz and former Storm member Mason Manville in Sunday's prelims, and the Floridian mowed down his three opponents by a combined score of 30-2. In the championship opener, he charged at Bisek right from the whistle.

Bisek wrapped him up and rolled him for three consecutive gutwrenches, giving him a 6-0 lead before Speiller could score. In the second match, Bisek scored two points with a gutwrench and two more when Speiller was called for fleeing.

That was all he needed. Coach Brandon Paulson grew emotional as he reflected on Bisek's journey.

"It's awesome,'' said Paulson, a 1996 Olympic silver medalist. "It took a lot of patience, and he's worked his tail off. He deserves this.''

At least one Minnesotan has made the Olympic team in Greco-Roman wrestling at every Summer Games since 1968. Sunday, Bisek added to that list, just as he had pictured.