Women's Wrestling Club

The record · World champions

World champions and World medalists

Senior World titles first, then the medals, then the age groups. Every placement here comes from the wrestler's own page, and every one of those traces to a primary source.

By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026

The first Women's World Championships were held in 1987 in Lorenskog, Norway, in the same year the men wrestled theirs in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The United States was not there. USA Wrestling sent its first women's World team two years later, to Martigny, Switzerland, in 1989, and started its women's program from that point. The team came home with three medals: a bronze at 47 kg for Afsoon Roshanzamir, the first World medal in the program's history, and silvers for Asia de Weese at 50 kg and Leia Kawaii at 70 kg.

The first American world title came in 1992, when Tricia Saunders won at 50 kg in Villeurbanne, France. Her four World titles were the most by an American woman for 27 years, until Adeline Gray won a fifth in 2019. In 1999 at Boden, Sweden, the United States won the team title for the first time, beating Japan by a point, with all six American wrestlers placing in the top six. Twenty years later at Nur-Sultan, the country won three World golds in a single championship for the first time, through Jacarra Winchester at 55 kg, Tamyra Mensah-Stock at 68 kg, and Gray at 76 kg.

Age-group World titles are listed separately below rather than mixed in. A U15, U17, U20 or U23 World championship is a real world title and it is named as one here, but it is not the senior championship and the site does not blur the two.

Senior World champions

A World title at the senior level, the championship the United States first entered in 1989.

Senior World medalists

A silver or bronze at the senior World Championships.

Age-group World champions

A World title at U15, U17 or Cadet, U20 or Junior, or U23.

Age-group World medalists

A silver or bronze at U17 or Cadet, U20 or Junior, or U23.

Next

The Olympians, the college national champions, and the dates behind the sport.

Photo credits

Photographer and outlet for each photo above. The license each one is used under is printed on that wrestler's own page.

Sources

  • olympedia.org · United World Wrestling: women first wrestled the World Championships in 1987 at Lorenskog, Norway
  • nwhof.org · National Wrestling Hall of Fame, by Gary Abbott of USA Wrestling: the 1989 first U.S. team and its three medals, Saunders in 1992, the 1999 team title, the three golds of 2019

Sources differ on the spelling of two names from the 1989 team. The Hall of Fame article gives Afsoon Roshanzamir, Asia de Weese and Leia Kawaii; a FloWrestling roster of every U.S. women's World teamer lists Afsoon Johnston and Leia Kawai. The spellings above are the Hall of Fame's.

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