The Women's World Wrestling Championships will be taking place in Halkida, Greece, Nov. 2-3. That means it is once again time for me to make my gold medal predictions. This is part of a larger effort by TheMat.com and Gary Abbott of USA Wrestling, who poll a panel of international sports journalists for their predictions.    In the men's freestyle and Greco predictions, my results have been mixed. I got two of the seven weight classes correct in freestyle. One journalist got three, but then Turkey's Harun Dogan was stripped of his gold at 60 kg, meaning that a bunch of us ended up tied at the top with two apiece. In Greco, I got a grand total of zero correct, so please don't ask me again why I don't gamble.    This is also a year of transition for women's wrestling. Many new, young women wrestlers will be competing this year in anticipation of women's wrestling being included in the Olympics for the first time in 2004. Many other former world champions and top wrestlers will be sitting this year's Worlds out, due either to injury, retirement, or just taking a year off.    There will be only four weight classes in women's wrestling in the Olympics, but FILA, the international wrestling federation, is using seven weight classes in other international competition. The increase of weight classes this year from six to seven, and the desire of top wrestlers to be situated in an Olympic weight class, has also led to several wrestlers switching weight classes and wrestling at one weight class in one event, and going up or down at other times. Thus, some of the U.S. World Team Trials and Asian Games winners will compete at the Worlds at weight classes that are newer for them.     All this means that women's wrestling is coming of age internationally. That in itself is an historic development.    Here are my gold medal predictions for the Women's World Wrestling Championships:    48 kg/105.5 lbs. -- Mika Noguchi -- Japan    I'm going with Mika Noguchi of Japan, who just turned 20 on Oct. 9. At this year's World University Championships in Edmonton, Canada, Noguchi finished first, ahead of China's Zhong Xiue, a 28-year-old former five-time world champion. Zhong was still good enough to win gold at this year's Asian Games. All this adds up to a victory in the World Championships for Noguchi, who is from Chukyo Women's University, and in 1999 was a world cadet champion at 46 kg.    51 kg/112.25 lbs. -- Chiharu Icho -- Japan  Here Japan goes with another young wrestler, Chiharu Icho, who just turned 21 in October. At this year's World University Championships, she won her weight class and finished ahead of China's Gao Yanzhi, who was a bronze medalist at the 2001 World Championships. Although this is Icho's first trip to a World Championship, coming home with gold is nothing new to her. In all her previous major international competitions -- the 2000 and 2001 Junior World Championships, the 2001 Asian Championships, and those 2002 World University Championships -- she finished first. Expect Chiharu Icho to come through again.    55 kg/121 lbs. -- Saori Yoshida -- Japan  Japan should strike gold once again here with rising superstar Saori Yoshida. She is another wrestler who has not lost in international competition. In 1998, she won the Cadet World Championships at 52 kg, and again in 1999 at 56 kg. In 2000 and 2001, she won the Junior World Championship at 58 kg. In 2002, she won the World University Championship at 59 kg. At the 2002 Asian Games, she went down to 55 kg, and won gold there as well, outscoring her four opponents 38-1, including an 11-1 drubbing of Korea's Lee Na Lae, who finished fourth at the 2001 World Championships. Yoshida's rout of Lee Na Lae demonstrates she can dominate against world-class senior competition. She also just turned 20 and also is from Chukyu Women's University. That must be quite a school!    59 kg/130 lbs. -- Ahmed Maher Doaa -- Egypt  This new weight class is stuck between the old weight classes of 56 kg and 62 kg, so it will be drawing wrestlers from both of those. That, and the fact that there is an influx of many new women wrestlers, makes it one of the trickier ones to predict. I agree with Gary Abbott's assessment that, "This new weight class will be very hard to handicap this year. There is really no way in advance to know which athletes will be competing because it is a new division in between two well-established weight classes. The fact that it is a non-Olympic weight class may also play a factor in determining where certain talented athletes compete this year."    Those circumstances might create the conditions for an upset, the emergence of a new star, or the return to form of a veteran. For example, this year's European Championships were won by Sara Eriksson of Sweden, who was a world champion back in 1995 and 1996. But she was only fifth last year, and at a lower weight, 56 kg. Japan's Rena Iwama won a world silver medal in 2000, but only finished in 14th place in 2001, both at 62 kg.     I am thus going to go out on a limb here and pick a newcomer and relative unknown: 2002 African Champion Ahmed Maher Doaa of Egypt. Although this was her first major international competition, she got the gold by defeating the veteran Faiza Bejaoui of Tunisia. Bejaoui, for her part, had finished second in the Klippan Ladies Open, ahead of Greece's Agoro Papavasileiou, who finished fourth at the 2002 European Championships. Bejaoui showed she was a talented wrestler in international competition bywinning the previous two African Championships, in 2000 at 51 kg and 2001 at 46 kg, and also by finishing in eighth place at the 2000 World Championships at 51 kg.    It's not much to go on, but Egypt's wrestling program seems to have taken a step forward by capturing silver and bronze medals at this year's Greco-Roman World Championships, along with finishing a strong second at the African Women's Championships, and first at both the African Freestyle Championships and African Greco-Roman Championships, sweeping all seven weight classes in the latter. So my pick is Ahmed Maher Doaa of Egypt.     63 kg/138.75 lbs. -- Meng Lili -- China  It seems more cut-and-dried at this weight class, just one kilo more than the old division in which China's Meng Lili won last year. She had been close to the top of this division for some time, winning a world silver medal in 1999 and tying for another silver at last year's Women's World Cup, where she finished behind Japan's Rena Iwama, who has since gone down to 59 kg. (Full results of this year's Women's World Cup, in which Meng wrestled again, have not yet been made available.) China's backup at this weight, Xu Haiyan, took a gold medal at the Asian Games, besting Japan's Kaori Icho in the finals.     At last year's Women's World Cup, Meng tied for second with Tara Hedican of Canada, a 2001 junior world champion. Despite winning gold at the 2002 Dave Schultz Memorial International, Hedican finished fourth at this year's Canada Cup of Freestyle Wrestling, losing to eventual gold medalist Xu Haiyan of China by a grand superiority with a 16-5 score, and in the bronze medal match to Lotta Andersson of Sweden by a 10-6 score. Hedican also only finished eighth at the 2002 Poland Open, although she only lost one match out of three. In her loss, she was pinned by Russia's Luba Volosova, before defeating Ewa Malarczyk of Poland 12-0 and the tough Stephanie Gross of Germany 7-6.     But Hedican, who turns 21 in November, is someone with tremendous potential. In her second year at Guelph University in Ontario, she won both the CIAU (Canada's college national championships) and the National Senior Championships. As a member of the Eabametoong First Nation and the Loon Clan, she also won in 2002 the Tom Longboat Award for being Canada's top female Aboriginal athlete of the year. Plus, she is a history major at Guelph.    We will see who wins this year, and it may be so that Meng still has the edge. But keep your eye on Tara Hedican, who one day will likely add a senior world title to her 2001 junior world championship.     67 kg/147.5 lbs. -- Kristie Marano -- U.S.  I'm looking for another comeba