For the past 14 years, the United States has been snakebitten at the lower middleweight 65/66kg weight class. That continued over the weekend at the Pan American Olympic Games Qualifier in Ottawa, Canada.

Although Agustín Destribats walked onto the mat in Sunday’s semifinal against Zain Retherford as a clear underdog, he came out on top of a leglace situation, putting a decidedly dour feeling on an otherwise amazing weekend for Team USA.

Men’s freestyle head coach Bill Zadick said it best afterward, that no one feels worse than Zain and there’s no reason to pile on. We’re not here to do that either, but we are here to paint a realistic picture of the challenges facing America to qualify the weight, and that’s before even thinking about the potential long-ranging impacts of COVID-19.

The long and short of it is, the United States has one final opportunity to qualify the weight for Tokyo, and that will hopefully come after the completion of the Olympic Team Trials. That’s exactly how it went in 2016, and it was a remarkably similar situation. Brent Metcalf was given the first two cracks at qualifying the weight, losing early at Worlds and then in a heart-wrenching manner at the Pan Am qualifier.

According to a release from United World Wrestling, they are targeting an early June date to reschedule the Last Chance Qualifier. It was originally slated for April 30-May 3 in Sofia, Bulgaria, though of course following every event that has been postponed is a tremendously fluid situation at this point.

The crux of the qualifying issue comes out of the ridiculous strength of Europe. That qualifier, along with the three other continentals, has been postponed. UWW is hoping for a mid-May Euro qualifier, but again that is of course just an idea right now and is very much up in the air.

Here is a rough outlook of the best competitors not yet qualified, with the obvious caveat being some of them may be replaced by other strong athletes from their nations.

• Haji Aliyev (AZE)
• Vladimer Khinchegashvili (GEO)
• Magomedmurad Gadzhiev (POL)
• Ilyas Bekbulatov (UZB)
• David Habat (SLO)
• Amirhossein Azim Maghsoudi (IRI)
• Niurgun Skriabin (BLR)
• Selahattin Kilicsallayan (TUR)
• Erik Arushanian (UKR)
• Ilman Mukhtarov (FRA)
• Vazgen Tevanyan (ARM)
• George Bucur (ROU)
• Haji Mohamad Ali (BRN)
• Alexander Semisorow (GER)
• Andrei Perpelita (MDA)

That's terrifying, and again, most of the worry comes out of Europe. Arushanian and Kilicsallayan will be the top seeds for that qualifier if they are sent by their country. An ideal situation would be to have Aliyev and Khinchegashvili opposite side, and for Uzbekistan and Bahrain to qualify out of Asia, whenever that occurs.

Just like at the Pan Am qualifier, you will have to win your semi at the Last Chance qualifier and make the finals, as there is no true second there. It's hard to see the American getting seeded there, either.

At this point, there are three main contenders for the spot: Zain Retherford, Jordan Oliver, and Yianni Diakomihalis, though Joey McKenna beat Yianni at Senior Nationals and 2016 Olympian Frank Molinaro will be in the bracket.

Since Zadick won gold in 2006, Team USA has wrestled for a medal just twice at this weight: Doug Schwab in 2007 and Molinaro in Rio. As long as you get in the field you can win a medal, though only 25 percent of the medals from the most recent Olympics came from countries that qualified via one of the then two last chance qualifiers, and they were all bronze medals.

Much is still up in the air, but there's no doubt the US will need the Trials winner to be healthy, locked in, and maybe even a little lucky to ensure the Red, White, and Blue has a 65kg representative at the Games. If not, it would be the first time in history the US would not qualify every men's freestyle weight for the Olympics.