After taking gold in Paris, wrestler Sarah Hildebrandt jotted. She tracked every time she had an urge to keep competing and every time she felt ready to retire.
Hildebrandt, one of four U.S. women to win an Olympic wrestling title, ultimately announced her retirement six months after the Games. She seized an opportunity to become a U.S. women’s national team assistant coach.
Yet she kept updating that running log in her phone.
“Every single day I was like, ‘Do I want to come back? I don’t know,’” she said. “I would sway back and forth.”
Within two months of the retirement announcement, Hildebrandt re-entered the drug-testing pool, just in case she changed her mind.
Olympic stars like Hildebrandt who unretire must make themselves available for drug testing for at least six months before they can return to top-level competition.
As time went on, she estimated that 70% to 80% of her phone notes pointed to unretiring.
There were more signs. Hildebrandt competed in the new Real American Freestyle league in August.
“I already had this leaning, like I think I do want to return,” she said. “Then I did that, and I really enjoyed it. I think that kind of let me probe a little deeper.”
Then in September, she went to the World Championships in Croatia in a coaching role. She helped fellow Olympic gold medalist Helen Maroulis prepare by wrestling daily with her in training. Maroulis, in a comeback of her own, won her fourth world title.
“Just watching the girls, or coaching the girls, that would always flutter up in me, like, oh yes, I want to partake in that,” said Hildebrandt, a 32-year-old from Granger, Indiana. “I was surrounded by such awesome women who are pursuing their dream and their career. I think that also helped me be inspired.”
Hildebrandt stepped away from coaching, spending the next two months deliberating whether to be a full-time athlete again.
She had an epiphany a few days before Thanksgiving. She journaled about it.
“I was trying to convince myself I was just being logical by not returning,” Hildebrandt said. “I really discovered I was afraid. I’m like, I don’t want to be controlled by fear. I’m just masking it as logic, or this just makes sense, or this is what people think you should do. When I really started to unpack that, I was like, oh my gosh, I am just a little afraid. I’m afraid of maybe what that would look like coming back.
“That’s exactly what I should go do (is come back). I love this sport. I love what it demands of me and what I discover of myself within it. Why would I not extend that for as long as I could?”
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, the United States’ Sarah Hildebrandt wins 50kg freestyle wrestling gold.
At the start of 2026, Hildebrandt began training full-time for a comeback at the U.S. Open from April 23-24.
On the morning of April 23, she lay on the floor and felt awestruck.
“I’m back doing this, and it just was blowing my mind,” she said. “I felt so overtaken with gratitude and amazement that this was even possible. I think that was validating in a sense of like, OK, this is where I want to be. But also, there’s still work to be done. I’m excited for that, and scared about that, and all of the emotions, really.”
She won her first four matches by mercy rule (10-0) to reach the 53kg final against Cristelle Rodriguez.
In that championship match, Rodriguez scored a takedown on Hildebrandt, who sensed something wasn’t right inside. Hildebrandt took a step and “felt everything just go.” That was the end of her U.S. Open.
She later learned she tore an adductor (in two places off the bone), groin and abdominal muscles on her left side. About a month before the event, she started noticing some pain in that area — enough to modify her training.
Hildebrandt is talking with surgeons to map out the next weeks and months.
“The injury that happened during my finals match at the US Open ain’t pretty and has put an end to the season I hardly even started,” she posted on social media.
It’s her first long-term injury since dislocating an elbow at the 2017 U.S. Open. Hildebrandt said that pain ended up catapulting her. She won her first world championships medal the next year, starting a run of six medals between the Olympics and worlds over a seven-year span.
“I’m taking (the muscle tears) kind of as a blessing that it’s happening this far out from (the 2028) Games still,” she said. “We have plenty of time to recover and plenty of time to come back into it all.”
Hildebrandt is committed to the comeback. She yearns to return to competition as soon as late 2026, health dictating.
It could be at her U.S. Open weight of 53kg or at her Olympic gold medal weight of 50kg.
She has wrestled in Argentina, Kazakhstan, Japan, Nicaragua and Norway, but never in a U.S.-hosted international tournament.
She called the LA28 Games, the first home Summer Olympics since 1996, “the external goal.”
“But of course, it’s gonna be moment to moment,” she said. “I think I’m just gonna keep gathering more information — physically, mentally, spiritually, all of the things. I came back because I like discovering myself in this sport. It really has been such an amazing teacher and mirror for me. So that’s what I’m going to continue doing. However that results, and whatever that looks like, or whatever the expiration date on that is, I’m kind of just purely coming humble to it all. I’m open and just gonna go see. It’s very terrifying.”
Elor is the youngest Olympic wrestling gold medalist in American history.
