Sunnyside High School graduate Audrey Jimenez is in position to win her first gold medal in world competition Friday, but she is basically looking at her finals appearance in the Under 20 World Championships as another opportunity to have fun and wrestle to the best of her ability.
Jimenez successfully earned a fourth age-group medal with a 14-3 semifinal victory Thursday at 50kg over Ukraine’s Diana Rysova in the Under 20 World Championships at Arena Samokova in Samokov, Bulgaria.
Audrey Jimenez Makes The 2025 U20 World Wrestling Finals! pic.twitter.com/ib6dMmCyIQ
— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) August 21, 2025
Jimenez, a U20 silver medalist each of the last two competitions, gave up her first points of the tournament. But her signature ankle lace proved to be the difference in the technical superiority victory over Rysova.
Jimenez will face Japan’s Rinka Ogawa, a 2023 U17 world champion, in the championship match Friday. Ogawa beat India’s Shruti 11-0 in the semifinals and pinned her first two opponents. Ogawa has not surrendered a point in her three matches.
Jimenez scored three technical superiority wins in three bouts to reach the final.
The four-time state champion at Sunnyside reached the final in 2022 but lost to Umi Ito of Japan. In 2023, she lost to Yanrong Li of China to finish with a silver medal. She also has a silver medal from the World U23 Championships in 2023 after dropping the final against Ito again.
“A lot of times going into those final matches, at least in the past, it’s against somebody like, of course, Japan a couple of times, and China just a couple of years ago,” Jimenez told USA Wrestling. “I think I was so overwhelmed with, ‘Okay, what do I have to do? What do I have to fix?’
“But not that it hasn’t worked in the past, but I don’t want to win that way or lose that way. I just want to go out there and wrestle my best match, have some fun, and use this to glorify God. … I’ve learned from the past. I don’t want to be results-driven. I just want to have fun out there, and shine my way.”
Jimenez, a sophomore at Lehigh, is also the U.S. Senior World Team representative this year. That competition will be held Sept. 13-21 in Zagreb, Croatia.
She will then compete in the U23 World Championships from Oct. 20-26 in Novi Sad, Serbia.
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