Rıza Kayaalp

Rıza Kayaalp is a Turkish Greco-Roman wrestler at 130 kg, born in Yozgat on 10 October 1989, competing for Ankara ASKİ. He has won the world championship five times and the European championship thirteen times, with an Olympic silver medal at Rio 2016 and bronze medals at London 2012 and Tokyo 2020. ^{1 2}

Kayaalp took his world titles in 2011, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022; in the 2011 final in Istanbul he beat Cuba's Mijaín López, who went on to become the most successful Greco-Roman wrestler in Olympic history, and he added world silver medals in 2014 and 2023. ¹ He collected thirteen European titles between 2010 and 2026, on the way equalling Aleksandr Karelin's record for European championships, won the Mediterranean Games gold twice (2009 and 2013) and carried Turkey's flag at the 2013 Games. At the Olympics he lost the Rio 2016 final to López to take silver, and won bronze at London 2012 and Tokyo 2020. ^{3 1}

On 7 March 2025 the International Testing Agency announced that the Anti-Doping Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport had imposed a four-year ban on Kayaalp after a sample taken from him on 28 May 2024 tested positive for trimetazidine, the ban running from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2028. Kayaalp said that he would appeal and that the substance came from a medicine he had taken for ringing in his ears, not to enhance performance. The articles nevertheless record his gold medal at the 2026 European Championships in Tirana. ¹

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