Olympic wrestler Kyle Snyder keeps Michigan-OSU rivalry fire stoked with Adam Coon
PARIS − When it comes to the Ohio State-Michigan football rivalry, Olympic wrestler and former Wolverine Adam Coon certainly holds bragging rights over his Team USA teammate, Kyle Snyder, who attended Ohio State.
Michigan, after all, has beaten the Buckeyes for three consecutive seasons and just won the College Football Playoff title game six months ago. But you wouldn't know it from how the two addressed the dynamic of their relationship on Thanksgiving weekends, when the Big Ten powerhouses collide in football, usually with championship implications. On Thursday, as the two approached the Paris Games wrestling competition that begins Aug. 5, Coon didn't bite. Defending champions, after all, can let the scoreboard do the talking.
"It's pretty cordial between us. There's not really too much trash talking," Coon said. "Maybe a couple jabs here or there, but nothing that gets too heated."
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Until it was Snyder's turn, anyway.
"It's been a tough couple years for Ohio State, but everybody knows what's going to happen the next 10 years because Michigan lost all their players and their coaches," Snyder said with a laugh. "It's going to be rough. But Ohio State is looking good."
"Like I said, a couple jabs," Coon retorted.
Snyder will compete in his third Olympics at the Paris Games, while Coon is a first-time Olympian. The two have become close in training together, although they are pursuing gold in different disciplines: Snyder as a freestyle wrestler at 97kg (213.8 pounds), and Coon as a Greco-Roman style wrestler at the heavyweight level (130 kg/286.6 pounds).
However, the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry once brought the two to the same mat in the NCAA heavyweight division. In fact, Snyder was considered unbeatable as a collegian, compiling a 35-match winning streak that extended three years and, while still at OSU, becoming the youngest Team USA wrestler to ever win a gold medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. Two years later, however, Coon snapped Snyder's win streak, in February of 2018, with a 3-1 win that ended with Snyder bloodied and, for the first time in three years, beaten.
Snyder would return the favor weeks later with a 4-2 win over Michigan's Coon in the Big Ten Championships.
But he can only hope the 2024 Buckeyes can do the same in football.
Reach Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread at [email protected]. Follow on X @chasegoodbread.