Amit Elor, Kara Kohler look to burnish area’s medal legacy at Paris Olympics

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA (July 19, 2024) — Amit Elor, just five years removed from winning a high school state wrestling championship for College Park, will be competing in her first Summer Olympics Aug. 5-6 as a wrestling gold medal contender while Clayton’s Kara Kohler will be in her third Games in Paris starting July 27 as one of America’s rowing team medal hopefuls.

Each local woman is competing at the highest level of her sport and are now part of the Olympic legacy created by nearly two dozen athletes with connections to Concord, Pleasant Hill and Clayton.

Including Elor, a dozen athletes who live, went to school in the area or trained with local clubs have been on Summer or Winter Olympic teams and half of those, including Kohler, have reached the podium to receive a cherished Olympic medal.

Incredibly, Kohler earned her bronze medal in quad sculls at the London Olympics on Aug. 1, 2012, the same day her fellow Clayton resident Kristian Ipsen also won bronze in three-meter synchronized diving.

The chart on Page B1 has a list of the local athletes and their years competing along with medals won. All of them trained and/or went to school locally except for 1960 Olympic pole vault champion Don Bragg, who lived many of his retirement years with his wife Theresa in Clayton. In 2010 they went to Rome for the 50th reunion of those Olympics.

Unsurprisingly, 15 of the local Olympians were in water sports—swimming, diving, water polo, synchronized swimming and rowing. Skier Daron Rahlves, who grew up Clayton, would be the 16th if you count snow skiing as simply competing on frozen water.

All these Olympians represented the United States except swimmer Niko Lahanas, a De La Salle graduate, who swam for Greece in the 1988 Seoul Games.

Elor is wrestling sensation

Elor missed her chance to take part in the 2020 United States Olympic Trials by a day. She was born Jan. 1, 2004, one day after the cutoff to meet the minimum age requirement to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, which were not held until 2021 due to the pandemic.

It was the winter of 2019 as a freshman at College Park High when she easily won the California state wrestling championship, winning all 36 of her matches. In the 150-pound weight class she pinned every North Coast Section and State Meet opponents with her two championship matches ending in 15 and 20 seconds, respectively.

Her older sister Ronny had won an unofficial state championship for College Park about a decade earlier before female high school wrestling was fully sanctioned and organized by CIF. When she was just three or four years old Amit loved to tag along to her teenage brother Orry’s wrestling matches. He competed for three years on the College Park wrestling team, placing eighth and third in the CIF State Meet as a heavyweight.

Any disappointment Elor felt on missing out on Tokyo has been taken out on her opponents as she won eight world championships from 2021-23 including senior worlds the last two years while she was still eligible to compete in U20 and U23 divisions. While winning those gold medals Elor had a 29-0 record with 17 technical falls, seven pins and outscored her 29 opponents 251-9.

Elor is competing at 68 kilograms in Paris, nearly nine pounds lighter than her regular weight class. Her punishing style utilizes a two-on-one and an underhook to win matches.

Kohler’s 3rd Olympics masks Rio disappointment

After being the youngest rower in the London Games at 21, Kohler, a four-time All-America and NCAA champion at Cal, was bitterly disappointed when she was not selected to any American boat for the 2016 Rio Games.

Her fellow Clayton bronze medalist Ipsen did represent the USA in Rio, taking fifth in the three-meter springboard and then retiring from the sport that he competed in since he was six years old as a record-setting diver at De La Salle High and Stanford.

Kohler took a short hiatus from rowing after being passed over in 2016 and decided the only way to ensure her participation in rowing events for the USA was to become a single sculler where all such decisions were determined on the water by racing.

She quickly established herself as the preeminent American single sculler, winning bronze at the 2019 World Championships and was named USRowing’s female Rower of the Year.

The Clayton Valley High grad qualified for Tokyo where she was ninth after a bad start in the semi-finals cost her qualifying for the medal finals by less than one second.

She has continued her domination of single sculls in our country through the Olympic Trials and will begin her Paris racing July 27, the official opening day of the Games with the finals set for Aug. 3. To reach the medal stand the 33-year-old will compete in four 2000-meter races over eight days.

The Pioneer in Paris will have reports and photos from Sports Editor Jay Bedecarré in Paris starting July 30 on our website.

Concord, Clayton and Pleasant Hill Olympians

Name	Sport	Olympics	Medals	Local Connection
Natalie Schneider Bartleson	Synchronized Swimming	1996	Gold	Concord resident Walnut Creek Aquanuts
Chuck Berkeley	Bobsled	2010		Concord resident
Matt Biondi	Swimming	1984 1988 1992	8 Gold 2 Silver 1 Bronze	Concord Swim Club
Don Bragg	Pole Vault	1960	Gold	Clayton resident
Natalie Coughlin	Swimming	2004 2008 2012	3 Gold 4 Silver 5 Bronze	Carondelet High School, Terrapin Swim Team
Tammy Crow DeClerq	Synchronized Swimming	2004	Bronze	Concord resident Walnut Creek Aquanuts
Erin Dobratz	Synchronized Swimming	2004	Bronze	Grew up in Concord-Clayton, Dana Hills Swim Team, Walnut Creek Aquanuts, Clayton Valley High School
Amit Elor	Wrestling	2024		College Park High School, Community Youth Center, Pleasant Hill resident
Nancy Hogshead	Swimming	1984	3 Gold 1 Silver	Concord Swim Club
Kristian Ipsen	Diving	2012 2016	Bronze	Clayton native, De La Salle High School
Kara Kohler	Rowing	2012 2020 2024	Bronze	Clayton resident, Dana Hills Swim Team, Clayton Valley High School
Mariya Koroleva	Synchronized Swimming	2012 2016		Concord resident Walnut Creek Aquanuts
Niko Lahanas*	Swimming	1988		De La Salle High School, Concord and Clayton resident
Tammy McGregor	Synchronized Swimming	1996	Gold	Concord resident Walnut Creek Aquanuts
Daron Rahlves	Skiing	1998 2002 2006 2010		Grew up in Clayton
Tiffany Roberts	Soccer	1996	Gold	Carondelet High School
Peter Rocca	Swimming	1976 1980	1 Gold 2 Silver	Concord Swim Club
Jill Savery	Synchronized Swimming	1996	Gold	Concord resident Walnut Creek Aquanuts
Peter Schnugg	Water Polo	1980		Concord Swim Club
Melissa Seidemann	Water Polo	2012 2016 2020	3 Gold	College Park High School, Diablo Valley Soccer Club, Pleasant Hill resident
Robby Smith	Wrestling	2020		Grew up in Concord, Community Youth Center

Read more stories about Kara Kohler and Amit Elor.