Despite missing out on Paris Olympics gold medal, Spencer Lee makes feelings known after winning prestigious award

USA Wrestling recently felicitated Olympic medalist wrestler Spencer Lee. The 26-year-old was awarded the John Smith Award by the USA Wrestling organization for his services last year.

The John Smith Award is given to the best-performing male freestyle wrestler of the year from the USA. It is named after John Smith, who won back-to-back Olympic gold medals for the USA.

While Spencer Lee was overwhelmed with receiving the award, he cheekily added in his Instagram story:

"I'd say I'm honored but this was the first Olympics in 56 years USA didn't have a gold medal 😂"

Screengrab of Spencer Lee's Instagram story [Image Source: Spencer Lee's Instagram]

Spencer Lee was referring to the profile of both the award winners, since neither he nor David Taylor, who was also nominated for the award, had won the Olympic gold medal that year. While Taylor failed to qualify for the Paris Olympics, Lee went down fighting to Japanese wrestler Rei Higuchi in the finals of men's 57kg freestyle wrestling at the Paris Games. Lee had to be content with a silver medal on his debut Olympic appearance.

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When Spencer Lee talked about his silver-medal-winning effort at the Paris Olympics

Spencer Lee with the silver medal from the Paris Olympics [Image Source: Getty]

Spencer Lee was all set to make his debut for the USA at the Tokyo Olympics. However, recurring knee injuries prevented him from doing so. He finally made his Olympic debut at the quadrennial event held in Paris last year.

Even though Lee performed better than expected, he had to settle for the silver medal after going down to Rei Higuchi of Japan in the finals. The American wrestler later talked about what went wrong for him.

In an interview with Gazette.com after the bout, Lee revealed that his efforts in the finals weren't enough, saying:

"Didn’t put a lot of effort. So, I didn’t deserve to win today, and that’s OK.

“Honestly, just do a lot more action, create action, force him to wrestle me. You know, yeah, he scored one scramble, but you know, I think action favors me and I let him hang on my hand and kind of stand there, and he won one scramble, and that was it,” he added.

Lee aims to make it count at the World Championships, scheduled for September 13-21 in Zagreb, Croatia.