Wrestling at the 1896 Summer Olympics – Men's Greco-Roman

The men's Greco-Roman was the only wrestling event on the Wrestling at the 1896 Summer Olympics programme.

No weight classes existed for the wrestling competition, held in the Panathinaiko Stadium which meant that there would only be one winner among competitors of all weights. It was the only time that an open weight wrestling event was held: in 1904, when wrestling returned to the Olympic programme, weight classes were implemented.

The rules used were similar to modern Greco-Roman wrestling, although there was no time limit, and not all leg holds were forbidden (in contrast to current rules). Apart from the two Greek contestants, all competitors had previously been active in other sports. The wrestling competition was held on 10 April, except for the continuation of the final on 11 April.

The tournament used ancient Greek single-elimination rules. There were no brackets as under modern single-elimination rules: instead, all participants in a round were paired off with one bye if a round had an odd number of participants left. This format could result in a semifinal round with only three competitors, as happened in both the 1896 wrestling and doubles tennis events, which started with five wrestlers/pairs (that is, the first round had two matches, with one wrestler/pair having a bye, and the second round had only one match, with another wrestler/pair having a bye: a modern tournament would have one match in the first round with three byes, leading to two semifinals).

Quarterfinals
Stephanos Christopoulos of Greece faced Momcsilló Tapavicza of Hungary in the first match: they were nearly evenly matched, with Christopoulous being declared the winner after Tapavicza was forced to retire due to injury.

In the second match, gymnastics champion Carl Schuhmann of Germany faced weightlifting champion Launceston Elliot of the United Kingdom. While Schuhmann won easily, Elliot claimed only one of his shoulders had touched the ground, and he vehemently protested the decision until he was escorted from the field by the Royal Princes.

Georgios Tsitas, the second Greek wrestler, had the bye in the first round, thus joining Christopoulos and Schuhmann as the three semifinalists.

Semi-finals
Schuhmann had the bye.

Much to the disappointment of the Greeks, the single semi-final match was between their two wrestlers, Tsitas and Christopoulos. Tsitas was declared the winner after Christopoulous suffered a broken shoulder and was forced to retire; despite this, Christopoulous won the bronze medal.

Final
In the final, Tsitas faced Schuhmann, and the bout lasted 40 minutes before it had to be postponed on account of darkness when the sun had begun to set, though Schuhmann protested this decision, claiming he only needed several minutes to defeat Tsitas.

At 9:00am the next morning (11 April), Schuhmann and Tsitas returned to their match, and Schuhmann captured the victory after 15 minutes with a fall.