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By JULIE SCOTT
8/8/04
FILE -- Canadian wrestler Christine Nordhagen, top, fights in the 68kg category against opponent Yayoi Urano of Japan during the women's Wrestling World Championship Friday July 11, 1997 in Clermont Ferrand central France stadium. The 33-year-old teacher, who grew up in Valhalla Centre, Alta., and now lives in Calgary, will compete for Canada in the 72-kilogram division in Athens, where women's freestyle wrestling will make its Olympic debut. (CP PICTURE ARCHIVE/Patrick Gardin) |
(CP) - There could be a medal bonanza for Canada when women's freestyle wrestling makes its Olympic debut in Athens.
"We have a very strong team," said Todd Hinds, the Canadian women's assistant coach. "We've got four medal hopefuls - four true medal hopefuls."
Six-time world champion Christine Nordhagen of Valhalla Centre, Alta., the most successful female wrestler in the world, leads a Canadian contingent that also includes Lyndsay Belisle of Hazelton, B.C., Tonya Verbeek of Beamsville, Ont., and Viola Yanik of Saskatoon.
On the men's side, Daniel Igali of Surrey, B.C., returns after winning Canada's first-ever gold medal in freestyle wrestling at the Sydney Olympics four years ago. He's joined by veteran Gia Sissaouri of Montreal, a silver medallist in Atlanta in 1996, and first-time Olympian Evan MacDonald of Ottawa.
In the women's event, Japan, Canada and the United States are dominant at the moment, though some eastern European countries are starting to make inroads.
"The Japanese have set the bar for what to expect," said Hinds. "Their calibre of wrestling is extremely high. We're certainly there and we can compete with them but in their history they have numerous world champions and they have a very strong team for this first Olympics."
Nordhagen's toughest competition in the 72-kilogram category will come from Kyoko Hamaguchi of Japan and American Toccara Montgomery. Hamaguchi is a five-time world champion while Montgomery, who is just 21, is a two-time world silver medallist.
Nordhagen, 33, has battled knee and other injuries since 2002, missing the last two world championships. But she says she's fit now and her confidence has been boosted by some promising results recently - gold medals at the Canada Cup and Austrian Ladies Open.
"Health-wise, I'm great," she said.
Japan's Kaori Icho, also a two-time world champion, is expected to challenge for gold in Yanik's 63-kilogram class. Yanik, who at 22 is the youngest member of the women's team, captured bronze at the world championships last year.
In Verbeek's 55-kilogram class, two-time world champion Saori Yoshida is the overwhelming favourite and will be very hard to beat. But Verbeek, who will turn 27 during the Games, is a World Cup and Pan American Games silver medallist.
In Belisle's 48-kilogram division Irina Melnik of Ukraine is a three-time world champion. But the 26-year-old Belisle has posted solid results of late, finishing first in the 2003 World Cup and capturing silver medals at the Canada Cup last month and Austrian Ladies Open in June. She also won a silver medal at the Pan Am Games last summer.
"We have opportunities to win many matches and challenge for medals in every weight," Canadian men's head coach Dave McKay said of the women's team. "That's very exciting that we have the opportunity to go there and be one of the top countries."
On the men's side, McKay says he's "cautiously optimistic."
"We're not getting ahead of ourselves," he said. "We've had some hurdles to jump recently with injuries. But that's part of the sport."
Sissaouri is coming off a knee injury while MacDonald dropped out of the Canada Cup tournament last month with a rib injury. Both have since recovered. The Vancouver Province reported recently that Igali suffered an undisclosed injury during a training session but is expected to compete in Athens.
Igali, 30, won't get the chance to defend his 69-kilogram medal since he's had to move up to 74 kilograms after his class was eliminated to make room for the women's program. He's also had several setbacks due to injuries over the past four years, preventing him from facing some of the top wrestlers in the new division.
"I'm not too distressed about my weight class anymore," Igali said. "I just have to wrestle as best as I can and I'm positive."
Capturing another gold medal will be a challenge in Athens, but he's known for studying his opponents carefully. There will be no surprises.
"We know exactly what each one of them does in situations," said McKay. "But the best way to prepare is to actually compete against them."
One wrestler Igali hasn't faced is Bouvaisa Saitiev of Russia. One of the best freestyle wrestlers in the world, Saitiev has won every major international tournament since 1995 - except the Sydney Olympics where he finished an uncharacteristic ninth.
While Sissaouri finished 12th at the 2003 world championships in New York, he is a former world champion at 58 kilograms. In Sydney, Sissaouri finished 13th after losing his first bout to eventual gold medallist Ali Reza Dabir of Iran.
While the 33-year-old calls himself an Olympic underdog, Sissaouri is confident he can do well at his third career Games.
"It's a high level there," he said. "Anybody's capable of anything."
Sissaouri's expecting his toughest competition in the 60-kilogram class to come from gold-medal favourite Yandro Quintana Ribalta of Cuba.
In McDonald's 66-kilogram category, defending world champion Irbek Farniev of Russia and world and Olympic silver medallist Serafim Barzakov of Bulgaria are among the favourites. McDonald, 23, has potential to finish in the top eight.
One of the key factors in the Olympic wrestling tournament is the draw. In each weight class, the athletes are separated into groups of three or four for the preliminary round with the winner of each group advancing. There are no seedings, however, meaning two of the top-ranked wrestlers could face off in the early rounds.
McKay would like to see the system changed.
"You could have the top three people in the weight class and two of them will not advance," he said. "For example, a world bronze medallist from two years ago from Ukraine did not advance in the qualification tournament.
"I think there should be some sort of seeding."
The wrestling tournament isn't until the final week of the Games. The Canadian team will enjoy the experience of the opening ceremonies before moving to Thessaloniki in northern Greece for a training camp. The team leaves for Greece on Tuesday.
A quick look at freestyle wrestling at the Aug. 13-29 Athens Olympics:
When: Women, Aug. 22-23; Men, Aug. 27-29.
Where: Ano Liossia Olympic Hall in the northwest region of Athens.
Canadian team: Christine Nordhagen, Valhalla Centre, Alta., 72 kilograms; Viola Yanik, Saskatoon, 63 kg; Tonya Verbeek, Beamsville, Ont., 55 kilograms; Lyndsay Belisle, Hazelton, B.C., 48 kg; Daniel Igali, Surrey, B.C., 74 kg; Evan MacDonald, Ottawa, 66 kg; Gia Sissaouri, Montreal, 60 kg.
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Ready to Rumble
America and Russia may dominate outside the ring—but Asia still rules when it comes to fighting
BY BRYAN WALSH Asia Time 8.9.04
WOMEN'S WRESTLING
The women who take to the mat in Athens won't just be battling for gold, silver and bronze—they'll be fighting for respect. That's a struggle Japan's top female wrestler, Kyoko Hamaguchi, understands well. As the daughter of popular 1970s pro wrestler Heigo (Animal) Hamaguchi, who today helps coach her, Kyoko Hamaguchi was expected to be a champion on bloodline alone. Her father never tried to make things easy on her. "I have been coaching my daughter since she was 13 and made her cry many times," he says. Determined to live up to his heady expectations, she worked harder than anyone. "The volume of her training is enormous," says sportswriter Toshiya Miyazaki, who has authored a book on the younger Hamaguchi's career. "If other wrestlers do something three times, she will do it five times." That drive has helped earn her five world championships, the first at age 19.
One indication of how popular Hamaguchi has become in Japan is that she has been given the honor of carrying the country's flag at the opening ceremony in Athens. Though other Japanese wrestlers Saori Yoshida (who has never lost an international competition) and sisters Chiharu and Kaori Icho are all expected to bring home gold, most Japanese eyes will remain on Hamaguchi. Her main rival will be American heavyweight Toccara Montgomery, who handed Hamaguchi a rare defeat in their last meeting. Hamaguchi claims to be keeping things in perspective. "I am the strongest I have ever been in my wrestling life, just in time for the Athens Olympics," she says. "But whether I win or lose, I am still the same person." True enough—but her opponents in Athens are likely to find her in a decidedly less philosophical mood.
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Ex-U.S., world champ likes coaching, sees women progressing
By Gary Mihoces, USA TODAY 8/8/04
From 1990-2001, Tricia Saunders won 11 national titles in women's wrestling and four world titles. The debut of women's wrestling in the Olympics comes too late for her, at least as a competitor.
Terry Steiner, left, with lightweight wrestler Patricia Miranda, is the first U.S. women's Olympic wrestling coach. |
However, she will be closely involved. She and her husband, Townsend Saunders, an Olympic silver medalist in 1996 in men's freestyle, are on the coaching staff of the four-member U.S. women's team that will wrestle in Athens. (Related story: Miranda a leader in sport's debut)
"I'm really happy to be coaching. I can't wait to be part of this aspect of my life's contribution to wrestling," she says."
Saunders, 38, grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich. Her father, grandfather and two brothers were wrestlers.
She began wrestling at 8. Until she was 12 she dominated youth competitions, regularly beating boys. When she got to high school, she wasn't allowed to join the boys team, so she became a gymnast.
She didn't return to wrestling until after college, when she discovered the USA was sending teams to the women's world championships. In 1992, she became the first U.S. woman to win a world wrestling title, in the 110-pound class.
She says the USA still has some catching up to do with the rest of the world, but she sees progress.
"A lot of people when they went and watched the world championships for the first time (in New York in 2003), they said, 'My gosh, women's wrestling's really come so far,' " she says.
"I want to say, 'Well, it's because you've only seen what's happened in the United States.' Those girls from Japan, they're 10 deep, and they've been that good for 10 years. ... We've never had the depth, but now in a number of these weights we have two or three contenders."
She and her husband live in Phoenix and have a daughter, Tassia, 9, and a son, Townsend III, 6.
"They both wrestle in a little club," she says. "If they decide to be a competitor in that sport, I really want that to be their decision. We'll see where it is their heart takes them."
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Miranda a leader in debut of women's wrestling
By Gary Mihoces, USA TODAY 8/9/04
Physician Jose Miranda stressed education to his daughter Patricia. When she joined the boys' wrestling team in eighth grade, his worries went beyond the headlocks and bloody noses. He feared her schoolwork would suffer.
Patricia Miranda, right, working out at the U.S. Training Center in Colorado Springs, treats wrestling like academics with meticulous preparation. |
"I was not very enthusiastic toward this thing," says the family practitioner in San Jose, Calif. "But we made a deal. If she could keep the A's and the 4.0 average, she could do whatever she pleased with the rest of her time."
Miranda became a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford, where she wrestled on the men's team and earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's in international policy. The 25-year-old will enter Yale Law School in September — after she represents the USA in Athens in the 105.5-pound class when women's freestyle wrestling makes its Olympic debut. (Related story: U.S. has wealth of experience in coaching staff)
Although it took her father years to watch her wrestle, he will be in Athens rooting for her and doing grappling contortions in the stands like a typical wrestling parent.
"I'm very proud of her," says Miranda's father, 59, who immigrated to the USA from Brazil. "But she did it on her own. I didn't do much except try to oppose it."
There are only six college varsity women's wrestling programs in the USA. About 4,000 high school girls wrestle, up from about 100 in 1990, but only Texas and Hawaii have separate, state-sanctioned girls competition.
Women, however, have wrestled in their own world championships since the late 1980s. Now they're in the Olympics.
"Women's wrestling isn't like women's soccer, or something like that, yet in the world," Miranda says. "Not everybody thinks it's something serious or something great. But this is something I do. I believe in it."
After putting Yale Law on hold for two years, she's out to improve on her silver-medal finish at the 2003 world championships in New York. "New York comes back every day," she says. "The only thing that really lets me put those voices to rest is the fact that there is redemption in Athens."
Five feet tall, Miranda has the sturdy build of a wrestler. But she looks most like a wrestler when she's hustling through practice, her T-shirt soaked with sweat or when she's hitting a move in a match.
"Wrestling is wrestling," says Terry Steiner, national women's coach for USA Wrestling. "That's what I've said to some of the naysayers, college coaches and stuff like that. I just said, 'If you had Patricia Miranda in your room for a month, you'd change your attitude about women's wrestling.' ... If she's not what the Olympics are all about, I'm missing the boat."
Men's freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling have seven weight classes. The women get four in Athens, but it's a start.
"They are really the survivors of the sport," says Steiner, a former NCAA champ at Iowa.
"They've had to put up with so much. Nobody goes through that if they don't love what they're doing."
Winning over dad a bonus
Miranda was 10 when her mother, Lia, died of a brain hemorrhage. Her father was left to raise four children, a challenge even with help from his mother and a nanny.
He made sure they focused on school. To him, wrestling was a diversion. To his daughter, it became a passion.
"The specific thing about wrestling that hooked me was how much like a fight it was," she says. "My initial goal was just to go back long enough to figure out how to fight back."
In ninth grade, she joined the Saratoga (Calif.) High boys' team coached by Lloyd Asato.
Her father did not attend her high school matches. Early in her high school career he visited the coach and the guidance counselor as "kind of a last recourse" to see if he could get her out of wrestling.
"The people in the school had been so supportive of my family when my wife died that I trusted them, basically,"' he says. "They told me there is a risk (his daughter) could go astray academically but that she was a good student and they were going to keep an eye on her."
By her junior and senior years, Miranda was a team captain and says she won "probably as much as I lost" against boys.
Then came Stanford, where coach Chris Horpel and later his successor, Steve Buddie, welcomed her to the men's team.
Miranda wrestled for five years at Stanford, mostly in the practice room. In her final season, she got into the lineup after the regular wrestler couldn't make weight and another had grade troubles.
She competed in the 125-pound class, lightest in college wrestling, even though she never weighed more than 120. Her foes typically cut weight.
In seven dual meets, she was 1-7. The victory was by forfeit, but she never was pinned. Her overall record in her final season was 3-13. She won twice in tournaments, once against a woman and once against a man from a community college.
At Stanford, she began dating wrestling teammate Levi Weikel-Magden, now her boyfriend and coach and a law student at the University of Virginia. He will help coach her in Athens.
"He basically coached me through college. ... He really helped me develop the backbone of my wrestling," Miranda says. "I'm not saying the Stanford coaches weren't extremely supportive and helpful, but they had their lineup to worry about."
Since 2002, she has been coached by Steiner as a resident athlete with USA Wrestling in Colorado Springs.
"Terry really filled in the holes in my basic wrestling. He knows my moves," Miranda says. "Levi is more my emotional coach. He understands when I'm feeling good, when I'm starting to doubt."
In high school and college, she began competing in women's freestyle. As a collegian in 2000, she made the U.S. world team as an injury substitute and took silver at the world championships.
Eventually, she also won over her father. She says they've always had a close relationship, but it was one that didn't involve wrestling. "I'd be gone on a wrestling trip and we'd call each other, but it would never come up," she says.
Her father recalls finally going to watch her wrestle in a women's tournament in the USA in 2001. He says it was time to hold up his end of the deal and show support. He quickly got into it.
"I was wrestling the chair in front of me. I almost broke my back," he says.
He'll be in Athens with his second wife, as well as Miranda's two brothers and sister.
Miranda says there was another telling indicator of her father's support. After the 2003 worlds, she reapplied for a fellowship she had been awarded a year earlier that would have offset her expenses at Yale. She didn't get it, and she called her dad to say she was sorry.
"That's when he really came around and said, 'Listen, you made the right choice,' " she says. "He'd never said anything like that."
Pinpointing attention to detail
Miranda takes the same well-planned approach to wrestling as she does to academics: "I think my academics have transferred and helped me out in athletics. ... I take notes in class and go back and outline the notes. I'll make a summary outline before the final, and I'll make flash cards. I have a process I go through in order to help me be at my best on a certain day."
Before a July training session, she went over handwritten notes on specifics. She has notebooks full of such details. She boils them down from one notebook to another, then finally to flash cards.
"Everything is very specific," she says, and that might include various tactics and options for match situations of all sorts.
"Some of it is attitude-oriented, like 'fight for every point.' ... But none of it is as broad as 'be a great person' or 'win a gold medal.' "
But her goal is the gold. In the 2003 worlds finals, she was beaten 5-4 by three-time world champion Irini Merleni of Ukraine.
"It was so surreal," Miranda says. "I felt like I was just cut in half."
In the seconds after the match was over, she thought if she focused hard enough, she could turn back time, put another minute on the clock.
She gets that chance. Two weeks from today, when the 105.5-pound class final is contested, she could have a shot at the first Olympic gold awarded to a woman wrestler.
"New York was worth it if it was a step along the way ... something that motivated me to get on the right track for Athens," she says.
Her father turns 60 Aug. 16. He's hoping for a "late present" when she competes.
He says his grasp of wrestling is very basic: "I know more or less when they score. ... I can't appreciate the fine things."
But he'll be there, wrestling the chair in front of him again.
"It's your child," he says. "You hope she can go out and beat the other girl."