Asnage Castelly

Asnage Castelly (born March 29, 1978) is a Haitian-American wrestler who competed for Haiti at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the 74kg freestyle competition.

Contents

• Stcc wrestler asnage castelly hopes olympic glory brings his sport to haiti
• 2005 canada cup 74 kg asnage castelly hai vs sheldon francis can
• References

Born in Haiti, Castelly moved to Irvington, New Jersey, at the age of 9, unable to speak English. Picked on as a child because of his lack of language skills, he became interested in wrestling after seeing a television broadcast of the Olympic games. He attended Irvington High School, where he competed in football, track and wrestling, winning a state district title in the sport. He graduated as part of the class of 1998.

He attended American International College, a liberal arts college in Springfield, Massachusetts, as the first member of his family to ever attend college. There he competed as part of the school's athletic program in Division II of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, graduating in 2002. He served in Iraq with the United States Army as a Muslim chaplain, and became a member of the coaching staff at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) after completing his military service.

Castelly is the first wrestler from Haiti to compete in the Olympics, a nation that has not won any Olympic medal since 1928. In order to be eligible to participate at the international level, he had to create the Haitian Wrestling Federation on his own. He received approval from both the Haitian Olympic Committee and the United World Wrestling, the international sanctioning body for the sport, and was allowed to compete. Alberto Nieves and his brother, former Olympian Anibál Nieves – his coaches at American International and the head coaches respectively of the men's and women's programs at STCC – have been acting as his Olympic coaches.

After creating the federation in 2005 and acting as its president, he worked unsuccessfully to compete at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the 2012 games in London, before receiving an invitation from United World Wrestling to compete as a wild card entry at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. As part of the 11-member contingent from Haiti at the 2016 games, Castelly was chosen to be the flag bearer at the opening ceremony, an honor that surprised him so much that he "thought it was a joke", when he was first notified. At 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) and 163 pounds (74 kg), he competed in the Wrestling Men's Freestyle 74 kg event. He was defeated in the first round by Hassan Yazdani of Iran.

He has returned to his native Haiti, where his wife and children live, to begin a youth wrestling program at a number of schools, as part of an effort to create a long-term buildup of the sport. He plans to move to Haiti full-time after the 2016 Olympics and hopes to have a wrestling program operating at schools across the country within four years.