Asnage Castelly

Asnage Castelly

Castelly at the 2016 Olympics
Personal information
Born	(1978-03-29) March 29, 1978 (age 39) Haiti
Height	182 cm (6 ft 0 in)
Weight	74 kg (163 lb)
Sport
Sport	Freestyle wrestling
Club	Nieves Wrestling Club, Springfield, MA, U.S.
Coached by	Anibal Nieves

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.

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.