What different weight classes are at Olympic wrestling?

Wrestling at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will retain the 18 weight category format seen at Rio 2016, but with fewer competitors overall.

A total of 344 wrestlers took to the mat in Brazil, which will decrease to 288 in order to accommodate athletes from newly-added disciplines and events to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic programme. Wrestling is one of several sports that will contract in numbers for this reason.

The 288 wrestlers in Japan will be split equally (96 athletes) between six weight categories in both men's and women's freestyle wrestling, while there will be a further six categories in Greco-Roman wrestling - which only features male competitors.

Wrestling will take place at the Makuhari Messe venue in Tokyo, August 2-8.

The weight classes

While the same amount of weight categories will feature in Tokyo as did in Rio four years previously (18), the weight boundaries themselves have changed slightly.

The new Olympic weight classes are as follows:

Men's Freestyle: 57kg, 65kg, 74kg, 86kg, 97kg, 125kg.

Women's Freestyle: 50kg, 53kg, 57kg, 62kg, 68kg, 76kg.

Greco-Roman (Men's): 60kg, 67kg, 77kg, 87kg, 97kg, 130kg.

The favourites

While wrestling's continental Olympic qualifying tournaments take place during March and April, there are certain names that, barring injury, expected to be challenging for top honours.

Japan are the benchmark when it comes to women's freestyle wrestling, and leading their efforts on home territory will be 62kg Olympic champion Risako Kawai. She has since moved down to the 57kg category, where she is the current world champion and in a rich vein of form.

Elsewhere in the women's events, keep an eye on five-time world champion Adeline Gray. The USA grappler will compete at 76kg and is desperate to the missing Olympic medal to her collection.

In men's freestyle, Russia's one million man Abdulrashid Sadualev will heavy heavy favourite to win another Olympic gold medal, this time in the 97kg bracket.

Japan have another hot tip for gold at 65kg, with 2018 world champion Takuto Otoguro recently defeating India's Bajrang Punia in the Asian Championships final.

In Greco-Roman wrestling, all eyes will be on Mijain Lopez, who has his sights locked on an astonishing fourth-consecutive 130kg gold medal, which would make him Cuba's most successful Olympian ever.