Profile · Germantown, Wisconsin
Jesse David Thielke
Hometown and high school: Germantown. Birthplace is variously listed as Kiel or West Bend.
$250,000
Jesse David Thielke is the Germantown wrestler who went 186–1 in high school, won four Wisconsin state titles, and reached the Rio Olympics in Greco-Roman. Raised in Germantown, he starred at Germantown High School, where the record that still gets read locally includes a win over Alex Dieringer, who later took the Hodge Trophy. As a schoolboy he told a USA Wrestling questionnaire that he wanted the Olympics and that the person who inspired him was his uncle Paul. He wrestled two seasons for the Wisconsin Badgers, then took an Olympic redshirt. At the April 2016 Trials he beat Spenser Mango in the semifinal and Ildar Hafizov in the final, a come-from-behind last-chance qualifier that sealed the final Olympic spot at 59 kilograms. In Rio he won 8–0 over Morocco's Mehdi Messaoudi in the round of 16, then fell 0–8 to Rovshan Bayramov, a former world champion and two-time Olympic silver medalist. Earlier he had taken junior world bronze in Pattaya in 2012 and cadet Pan American gold in Managua in 2009. He later trained with the Army World Class Athlete Program and the New York Athletic Club. Birthplace listings split between Kiel and West Bend; the hometown, high school, and yearbook are Germantown.