Jordan BURROUGHS (USA) and Roman VLASOV (RUS) dominated the 2014 World Championship in Las Vegas, helping their respective Olympic Committees to vote them as Best Male Olympic Athletes. Burroughs, who took the 74kg freestyle title is only the third wrestler to ever receive the honor. Vlasov, who dominated a packed 75kg Greco-Roman field at the World Championships, is a returning Olympic champion and the top-ranked wrestler in the world at his weight.

From USA Wrestling:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The United States Olympic Committee today announced the 2014-15 winners for the Team USA Awards presented by Dow, Best of the Year, recognizing the outstanding achievements of Team USA athletes and teams in six categories:

The Male Olympic Athlete of the Year is 2015 World champion freestyle wrestler Jordan Burroughs (Lincoln, Neb./Sunkist Kids/Nebraska RTC).

Burroughs becomes just the third wrestler to win a USOC Athlete of the Year award, joining Olympic and World champions John Smith in 1990 and Rulon Gardner in 2000.

“This is fun. Wrestlers don’t get a lot of notoriety, especially when we go up against some of the more publically-aware sports like swimming and track and others, all which have some amazing athletes who are very well known. Winning this award has been a long process. I think to when I came out in 2011 after college, all of the many challenges, going into the London Games relatively unknown. Having all this recognition poured my way as we head into Rio is very exciting,” said Burroughs.

FULL STORY: http://uww.io/92J8w

From WrestRus:

The world champion in Greco-Roman wrestling-2015 Roman Vlasov recognized as the best Russian athletes. The award was handed to him the head of the Russian presidential administration Sergei Ivanov, presidential aide Igor Levitin. Recognized as the best athlete fencer Sofia Velikaya, who won this year's two world championship gold. Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, who presented the award of the Great Sophia, commented on the choice of laureates for WRESTRUS.RU. - The Russian national team - it's a huge family consisting of 3,000 athletes performing in 54's sports - said Mutko. - This year and summer sports and winter - we had were world records

FULL STORY: http://uww.io/BRFez