Luis Orta won the bronze medal in the 67 kilograms of Greco-Roman wrestling at the Senior World Championship in Astana 2026 this Tuesday, defeating the Armenian Slavik Galstyan by 10-6 in the third place match.
The path to the podium was not straightforward. On Monday, Orta was defeated in the quarterfinals by Uzbek Aytjan Khalmakhanov with a score of 4-6, in a match that slipped away from him from the first period. However, since Khalmakhanov advanced to the final, UWW regulations allowed for a repechage for all wrestlers who had lost to a finalist.
In that second opportunity, Orta defeated the American Otto Black 7-4, according to a report by USA Wrestling, which described the Cuban as a "world and Olympic champion." Having passed that test, the wrestler from the Island faced Galstyan and overcame him decisively to reach the podium.
The victory against the Armenian has a direct precedent: at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Orta also lost in the quarterfinals — to the same Esmaeili, with a score of 0-9 — and made a comeback in the repechage to win the Olympic bronze by defeating none other than Galstyan, this time by a score of 7-0. The pattern repeated itself in Astana, but with a closer margin.
The gold medal in the category went to the Iranian Saeid Esmaeili Leivesi, who won by technical superiority 8-0 against the Uzbek Khalmakhanov in the final. The other bronze medal was awarded to the Kazakh Bagdat Sabaz, who defeated the Azerbaijani Hasrat Jafarov 8-5.
The accomplishments of Orta place him among the most accomplished Greco-Roman wrestlers of his generation. He won the Olympic gold in Tokyo 2020 in the 60 kg category, the world title in Belgrade 2023—when UWW named him the best Greco-Roman wrestler in the world—the Olympic bronze in Paris 2024, and the world bronze in Zagreb 2025.
The year 2026 had been irregular for the Cuban: in March, he lost 9-0 to Khalmakhanov in the Professional Wrestling League in Tashkent, and in July, he missed the Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo due to an arbovirosis.
Cuba arrived at the World Championship in Astana with nine wrestlers, with the declared goal of improving on the 27th place achieved in Zagreb 2025, where Orta was the team's only medal. The bronze medal awarded this Tuesday at the Barys Arena in the Kazakh capital is the first confirmed medal for the Cuban delegation in this edition of the championship, which runs until November 1.
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