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Nordhagen-Vierling is keeping her word

By ALLAN MAKI 8/3/04
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Calgary — This being wrestling, Christine Nordhagen-Vierling is working on her lines. Not the "I'm gonna tear 'em to pieces" diatribe you hear on the pro circuit. Rather, the 10-time Canadian national champion and six-time world champion is working on the lines she will quietly repeat before beginning her quest to win the first Olympic gold medal awarded in women's freestyle wrestling.

Polishing her mantra, as well as tearing her rivals to pieces, has been Nordhagen-Vierling's trademark since she won her first senior world title in 1994.

Back then, her coach gave the wrestler a few phrases to help calm her nerves before a match. Since then, her coach has taken on an expanded role and become her husband. It's made for an interesting subplot in what is sure to be a hot story: National team coach leads wife/star athlete to Olympic showdown.

And yet for Nordhagen-Vierling and Leigh Vierling, their working relationship is no big deal. What is important is their chance to seize the moment and make history, which is why they're so big on mental preparation and the power of empowering words.

"Leigh gave me some phrases to go over so I could focus on something positive," Nordhagen-Vierling said. "They were the most important thing I took with me to the 1993 world championships [where she placed second]. I'd say them like, 'I, Christine, am a healthy, confident, powerful individual. You, Christine, are a healthy, confident, powerful individual. She, Christine, is a healthy, confident, powerful individual.'

"Then, I'd say, 'I, Christine, have the boldness and drive to make anything happen. You, Christine .....' I'd repeat them and it was cool because I was in this zone. I was ready to go and I wasn't scared.

"We're working on new lines for Athens."

Nordhagen-Vierling, 33, is confident and powerful enough to win a medal for Canada in the 72-kilogram class of a sport that will make its debut in the middle of the Athens schedule. But never in her competitive life will she encounter anything so overwhelming and pressure-packed as an Olympic Games.

It's a fact her coach acknowledges while trying to juggle training regimens and the intrusion of a planned television documentary dubbed Girls Don't Fight.

"I've spoken to [former wrestler] Chris Wilson and he was an Olympian in Barcelona [in 1992]," Vierling said. "For him, he'd been a strong Olympic gold-medal favourite and he ended up eighth. And he said, 'I don't want that happening to her. You have to realize there's going to be these invasions, all this media. For her, it's going to be huge.'

"So he said, 'Why don't you contact someone?' We went out with [former Olympic speed-skating champion] Catriona Le May Doan. It was a good education."

Nordhagen-Vierling and Vierling are as much into planning as they are positive thinking.

He's a Calgary-raised former national wrestling champ turned women's coach who has also worked as a motivational speaker. She was born in the farming hamlet of Valhalla Centre, northwest of Grande Prairie, Alta., and is a teacher on leave who fell in love with wrestling while attending Edmonton's University of Alberta. She transferred to the University of Calgary in 1994 to be closer to Vierling, then her boyfriend.

The two trained together and were inseparable. Vierling coached on a voluntary, unpaid basis and taught Nordhagen the finer points of mental toughness.

"Leigh helped me out a lot," Nordhagen-Vierling said. "He was my friend at the time, a guy I really had a big crush on. He gave me some pointers on mental preparation, which I'd never even heard about. All I'd been taught before was technique. Here I was going to the worlds and I wasn't even prepared."

Unfortunately for Vierling, he wasn't allowed to accompany his girlfriend to the 1994 world championships because of Canadian Wrestling Federation concerns over nepotism.

"I said, 'If I have to choose to be your boyfriend or your coach, I'll choose to be your boyfriend.' So I took a step back that next year and I didn't coach Christine," Vierling said. "Ironically, she went to the [1995] worlds and she . . . how would you say you did?"

"Not very good," Nordhagen-Vierling answered.

"She ended up fourth," Vierling said, "but she lost 10-0 to a girl she'd beaten the year before in the final. So I was in a bit of a dilemma. Do I put my little feelings on the shelf and get back in there? And I said, 'Okay, I'll coach again.' Somewhere between 1995 and 1996, I was asked to be the [Canadian team] head coach.

"I had three athletes on the [1996 world championship] team. One came first, that was Christine, one came second and one came fourth. I think the CWF wasn't too worried after that."

Nordhagen and Vierling were married in 1999. Their partnership is based on a profound respect for one another and a gung-ho philosophy. Nordhagen-Vierling is the first to admit that living with her coach/husband is much like "being married to [motivational speaker] Anthony Robbins."

She also knows Vierling's promptings are important to her doing well in Greece.

The past two years certainly tested Nordhagen-Vierling's resolve.

After winning the 2001 world title, she underwent arthroscopic surgery in both knees and took time off. She returned to competition in 2003 assuming she'd pick up where she left off, but her timing was sluggish, which led to other injuries. She lost more matches than at any other point in her career.

"I just assumed I'd be exactly where I left off," she said. "I wasn't. Not being able to be as strong in certain positions, the timing was off, everything was not quite right. I got other injuries, the whole year I was plagued by a variety of hurts."

Last summer, she finally began to feel healthy and was strong in several events, including the Canadian Olympic trials and a tourney test in Athens. Having handled virtually everything her sport can throw at her, Nordhagen-Vierling has vowed not to be rattled in Athens.

"I do a lot of talking to myself, putting it into perspective that this is a great opportunity," she said. "I mean, how many people get the chance to represent their country in an Olympic Games? So instead of being freaked out, I want to feel there's nothing scary about it."

Her coach/husband agrees, knowing that Nordhagen-Vierling's toughest competition will come from five-time world and current champion Kyoko Hamaguchi of Japan. Hamaguchi's father was a pro wrestler who trained in Calgary.

"A lot of people look at the grandeur of the event, [and say] 'who am I to think I can be a gold medalist at the Olympic Games?' We're trying to give it its due, but we're going to be walking out there against 11 other athletes," he said.

"We've done our homework against the best of them. We've watched them on video. I know their wrestling better than they know it. So Christine's not afraid to go for it."

As a healthy, confident, powerful individual. With the boldness and drive to make anything happen. It's all so simple, she said: Say the words, believe the words, then tear 'em to pieces.

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Japan will have a woman flag-bearer, wrestling's Kyoko Hamaguchi, who was selected earlier this summer.

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Finally in the Olympic spotlight

Christine Nordhagen, one of the pioneers of women's wrestling, put off retirement to compete for gold and bask in the newfound respect Olympic status has conferred on her sport.

By Tony Care, CBC Sports Online | June 14, 2004

Christine Nordhagen defeats Japan's Yayoi Urano on the way to winning the world championship in the 68-kilogram class. (CP)

Christine Nordhagen knows she'll be part of something special when she steps onto an Olympic mat for the first time in Athens.

She's aware of the impact her competing could have on future generations of Canadian women intrigued by sports that have been traditionally off-limits to women.

Since the first world championship in women's wrestling in 1987, national participation in the sport has shot up dramatically. But until a sport acquires the stature of Olympic sanction, it hasn't reached its pinnacle from the perspective of exposure and funding.

That began to change in 2001, when the International Olympic Committee announced that women's wrestling would be part of the roster of events at the Athens Games.

Nordhagen, who lives in Calgary, started wrestling in 1991. Until this year, the big payoff for all her hard work has always been competing in the world championships.

The Olympics, though, mean an exponentially larger audience, and Nordhagen appreciates the boost that will give her sport's visibility.

"I think it's going to give our sport the respect that it deserves," says Nordhagen during an interview with CBC Sports Online. "The guys have had this forever, and it's about time that we get the same opportunity and respect.

"I think now that wrestling is in the Olympics, more countries that are in the developmental stages of wrestling are going to put more money into their national team and develop the sport even further."

A booming sport

Despite the long road women's wrestling took to finally reach the Olympics, Nordhagen always felt confident it would come to pass during her career. The sport met the IOC's criteria in all areas, and it also fell in line with the organization's attempt to evenly distribute Olympic sports between men and women.

All the IOC had to do was look at the increasing number of countries sending women to the world championship over the last 17 years. In 1987, only nine nations took part in the women's world championships. The number ballooned to 41 in 2003. In addition, 54 nations attended the qualification events for the 2004 Olympics, with 21 nations qualifying to send female wrestlers to the Athens Games.

The chance to compete for a medal in the Olympics is the main reason Nordhagen remains an active wrestler. A six-time world champion, Nordhagen battled injuries two years ago that would likely have otherwise ended her career.

And at 33, she's accomplished more than any other woman in the sport and is considered a legend by many wrestlers who have competed against her.

"I think if it (women's wrestling) wasn't (an Olympic sport), I probably would have hung up my boots a couple of years ago," she says. "I had some injuries I was dealing with, and it was quite difficult to train. There's times when you think, 'Is it worth it, my body is breaking down,' but finding out that wrestling was going to be in the Olympics was something that motivated and pushed me."

New knees, please

After winning the 2001 world championships, the constant pounding Nordhagen endured over the years finally caught up with her. Training was increasingly painful, so she decided to have both knees scoped.

Her doctor discovered that all her cartilage was gone, and the pain became too intense to continue. They attempted to create scar tissue as a substitute for the cartilage, but the procedure was unsuccessful.

"It's like arthritis," Nordhagen explains. "It was just starting to aggravate me, and it hurt a lot to get into a stance. It just took forever to warm up, and I just thought I had to deal with this so I could have time to recover and get into the best shape possible for the Olympics."

When her knees failed to respond to physiotherapy after five months, Nordhagen's doctor decided to give her an injection of Synvisc, a synthetic lubricant used to treat joint problems, every three-and-a-half months.

Synvisc, which is used for patients with osteoarthritis, is injected in the back of the knee. It produces an artificial cushion that prevents bone-on-bone contact, a problem that was causing Nordhagen a great deal of pain. The product has been on the market for roughly 10 years and has allowed the Canadian veteran to continue her career.

"Once I had these injections it was just like night and day," she says. "It was like, 'Wow, I can dance without pain.' "

Tag-team partners

Nordhagen's husband, Leigh Vierling, keeps her focus through the highs of the world championships and the lows of the nagging injuries and monotonous training. The former Greco-Roman wrestling national champion has been Nordhagen's personal coach since 1994 and became the women's national coach in 1996.

Nordhagen, who says she's completely healthy now, credits Vierling's coaching ability for molding her into a multiple world champion and doesn't quarrel when he gets on her to improve her performance.

Vierling, who was known as a fierce competitor in his wrestling days, acknowledges that balancing his wife's wrestling career and a home life can be demanding at times.

"I think both of us have a lot invested in this, so there's times when one person is really thinking about it, and the other one just wants a break," he says. "So we really have to be careful that we don't overdo it in some ways, but we've gone down this road a lot before so it's not unfamiliar territory for us. I think we have a great working relationship."

A great rivalry gets a new stage

It's difficult to predict how Nordhagen will fare in Athens, but her strength and quickness in recent matches have reminded her fans and rivals alike of her past dominance.

Nordhagen's chief rival in the 72-kilogram class is five-time and current world champion Kyoko Hamaguchi. The two have had some memorable battles, each winning three matches over the other in course of their rivalry.

Their styles couldn't be more different and always lead to close confrontations. Nordhagen is a very aggressive and offensive wrestler, while Hamaguchi grapples defensively and waits for an opening.

Hamaguchi is bigger, but Nordhagen is quicker. At a World Cup event in Tokyo in October, Nordhagen defeated Hamaguchi in her own backyard with an unrelenting crowd cheering its hometown queen on. Nordhagen was behind in the match but put the defending world champion on her back in the final minute for the win.

In January the two squared off in Athens and, true to form, Hamaguchi returned the favour in another close battle. With the match coming down to the final minute once again, Hamaguchi took Nordhagen down with an arm bar to seal the victory.

"It is fun because I know it's going to be a good match every time. It's always been close and we go back and forth," says Nordhagen.

"I'm really looking forward to wrestling her."

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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 8/16/04

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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NBC: Bios from the USA, Japan and Canada

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Women ready to rumble

By George Kimball
Recent Columns by George Kimball
Saturday, August 14, 2004

ATHENS - Patricia Miranda is 25 years old and a Stanford graduate. Next month she will begin classes at Yale Law School, having deferred her postgraduate studies for a year in order to participate in the 2004 Olympics. She weighs 105 pounds, is bright and feisty, and genuinely ticked off that she finds herself defending her chosen sport to snickering strangers.

``We are not mud-wrestlers,'' Miranda said.

Wrestling might be the oldest Olympic sport, but women's freestyle is the newest, having just been added for the Athens Games.

``I don't get many negative responses,''said Tela O'Donnell, Miranda's U.S. teammate. ``Most of the time, especially with other women, it's like, `Really? Wow, good for you!' The only negative responses I get are more like, `You're a wrestler?', like they anticipated that I would be bigger, have two teeth and look like an ogre.''

Miranda (51 kilograms) and O'Donnell (55) represent half of the U.S. contingent in the pioneer class of '04, joining Sara McMann and 21-year-old Cumberland College student Tocarra Montgomery.

They are groundbreakers, but surely owe a debt of gratitude to the likes of Tricia Saunders, the U.S. assistant coach who spent two decades pushing to have the sport added to the Olympic program.

``I started wrestling in 1989,'' Saunders said. ``I competed on the circuit with women from across the world, my competitors from different countries who are now my friends because when we came to compete we all had the same goal: `Let's get to the Olympics.' A few of them are still going and will get to get a taste of it now.

``We were told maybe you'll get in in '92, then '96, then 2000,'' Saunders added. ``We kept going for it, but it didn't happen. That's OK for those of us who've retired now, and I'm very honored to be a coach of these four, who have taken the torch from the group of Americans who paved the way. They've taken it and stepped it up to a new level.''

Miranda has been wrestling since she was in junior high school.

``I was ready for something that would challenge me,'' she said. ``I didn't know that wrestling would be my thing. I walked into practice because I was a curious kid and did tryouts. It scared me so much that first day that I knew it was something that would take all of my mind, all of my body to become good at, and that really excited me. I also liked the fact that it was a one-on-one combat sport.''

Montgomery's motivation was entirely different.

``To be honest, I was looking to get voted `most athletic' in my high school class, and I needed another sport,'' she recalled with a grin.

Like most of her colleagues, Montgomery had to cut her wrestling teeth against male opponents.

``It was really tough for me at first,'' she said. ``There were opposing teams that refused to wrestle me, or coaches that wouldn't let their athletes wrestle me, but that's definitely changed over the last couple of years. I can go back now and I have guys coming out and asking me if I would wrestle with them.''

Said O'Donnell, who grew up in Alaska: ``When I first started wrestling in the eighth grade, they wouldn't let me. I guess there'd been a girl wrestler earlier who'd beaten some of the boys and their parents were upset. I talked to the school board members, wrote letters and made phone calls, and eventually they let me stay on the team - as a practice person.''

Although they wear the same uniforms, share the same facility, and live in the same Olympic village as their male Greco-Roman and freestyle teammates, one came away with the distinct impression that the U.S. men are probably not the women's greatest supporters. Miranda, for one, doesn't expect to have Rulon Gardner at mat-side cheering her on when she wrestles next Saturday.

But she's an Olympian now and no one, male or female, can take that away from her.

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Seeking glory - with a heavy heart
Wrestler McMann fights through pain of brother's murder

By Chris Tomasson, Rocky Mountain News
August 16, 2004

ATHENS - Jason McMann was the first wrestling star in the family. He was Maryland state champion in a 9-to-10-year-old age group.

And he was only 8 at the time

Three years younger, Jason's sister, Sara, liked to watch her brother perform. It didn't seem to matter that she often seemed to be looking up at him while being pinned.

"I kind of worshipped him," she said. "I would go to his practices and try to imitate what he was doing. Not to mention that most of my life I was his wrestling dummy."

Jason collected trophies and ribbons by the boatload. But his road to stardom was derailed at 12. A car turned quickly into a driveway, and the driver didn't see Jason.

The boy was hit. He suffered two broken legs and a crushed hip and doctors said he'd never walk again.

But Jason did walk. He even wrestled again.

He never would become the wrestler he was, though. So Sara continued the McMann family tradition.

"My career kind of picked up where he left off," said Sara, now 23, who will begin Olympics competition Sunday for the United States.

The McMann family moved around quite a bit when she was young as Sara's father, Thomas "Tucker" McMann, took different construction jobs. After the family settled in Marion, N.C., 90 miles west of Charlotte, Sara became the first girl to wrestle for the boys' team at McDowell High School.

She earned a scholarship to the University of Minnesota-Morris, which has a women's program. But she received crushing news during her freshman year of 1998-99.

Jason had moved back to Lock Haven, Pa., where the family had lived when the children were young, to help a cousin who was having problems with a man who owed him money over a marijuana deal. Jason got into several altercations, and in January 1999 he turned up missing.

Three months went by and there was no trace. Finally, in April 1999, Jason's badly decomposed body turned up 20 miles outside the central Pennsylvania town of 10,000.

"That broke all our hearts," said Sara, who now lives in Colorado Springs.

For three years, the crime went unsolved. Finally, with the help of the television show America's Most Wanted, Fabian Desmond Smart and an alleged accomplice were arrested in June 2002. Two others later were arrested in the case.

Smart, 26, a former Lock Haven University football player, will go on trial next month on charges of murder and kidnapping. The death penalty is being sought.

For a brief moment, Sara will try to take the family's mind off the trial. She will be competing in the 138.5-pound weight class in the first-time Olympics sport.

"There are a lot of mixed emotions," said her mother, Paula McMann, who will travel with her husband to Athens for the competition. "We know the trial is coming up, but seeing her compete (in the Olympics) is a dream come true. She's worked so hard. We just know she's going to win."

The experts don't disagree. Sara is considered one of the favorites, along with Japan's Kaori Icho.

To say Sara is wrestling for the memory of Jason would be an understatement. She is wrestling for an entire family.

Tucker, 54, and Paula, 50, talk openly about how hard life has been since their son's death.

"Sara has kept this family going," he said. "I've read statistics that 98 percent of (couples) that lose a child end up getting separated. With the strong faith she has, she's kept us going."

Sara's father, though, has done his part. After Jason's death, Sara left Minnesota-Morris to return home to Lock Haven, where her parents had moved to help look for Jason after his disappearance.

"She was thinking about quitting wrestling," said Paula, who wears a necklace made from the plates and screws used to reconstruct her son's hip after he was hit by the car. "But my husband sat her down and talked to her. He said, 'You can either be a champion or a loser.' "

Sara became a champion. She enrolled at Lock Haven University as a theater major and spent three years training with the men's team while beginning a run in 2000 of four consecutive national women's titles.

There was a time, though, when Sara was wrestling only males. In fall 1994, she walked into a practice at McDowell High and said she wanted to wrestle.

"I'll admit at first I wasn't too crazy about the idea," McDowell coach Tim Hutchins said.

Neither was Sara's mother. Saying she didn't want other boys to "touch my daughter," she declined to sign a permission form.

But a football coach called Sara's mother to tell her she had made a wise decision.

"He said that women belong in the kitchen and are for having children," she said. "That made me angry, so I signed the form."

Sara made the most of her opportunity despite facing great adversity. Opposing coaches sometimes would forfeit to her as a means of protest. Other times, they sent out their best wrestler.

Nevertheless, Sara went 15-13 as a senior. She was named honorable mention all-conference.

"She had such a great personality that everybody on the team liked her," Hutchins said. "And she worked harder than anybody."

Sara's hard work continued the next year at Minnesota-Morris. But her world was shattered in the middle of her freshman season.

Being new to campus, she kept news of her brother's disappearance to herself.

"My coach didn't even find out until a week before the national tournament," said Sara, who has a sister, Nickolina, 28, who lives in California. "I'm like, 'I've got to go back to Pennsylvania for my brother's funeral.' He was floored. . . . I just kept everything to myself. My grades dipped. I had a lack of focus."

Sara moved to Lock Haven to help her family cope. She was there to support them during the three years it took to learn answers about her brother's murder.

In late 1998, Jason was living in Maryland. His father said a cousin of Jason's, Jeffery Stauffer, was owed $6,200 in a Lock Haven marijuana deal with Smart.

Retired Miami Beach, Fla., police Sgt. Jim Matthews, an investigator for America's Most Wanted, said when Smart wouldn't produce marijuana or return the money, Jason got into the act. Matthews said Jason was not involved in any drug deals but began to beat up Smart regularly.

One night, Smart apparently had enough of it. In January 1999, outside an off-campus residence called the "football house," police reports say he and Willie Marvin Williams, 26, who faces murder and kidnapping charges but is cooperating with authorities, allegedly beat up Jason.

With the help of two other football players, they allegedly loaded a barely breathing Jason into the trunk of a Cadillac.

Williams has told police he and Smart drove Jason to a rural area, where Smart allegedly tried to shoot him with Williams' gun. When the gun failed to fire, Smart allegedly hit him with it and left him to die.

It wasn't until April that Jason's body was found by two girls walking in the wilderness.

Lock Haven police reached numerous dead-ends. District attorney Ted McKnight said it was difficult because two weeks had gone by before he was reported missing and because his body was so badly decomposed it was hard to determine a cause of death.

"They dragged their feet," Tucker McMann said.

Near the end of 1999, with little progress being made in the investigation, McMann got a break that would change the path of the case. It didn't look like a break at first when he was driving on Interstate 95 in Maryland and saw sirens in his rearview mirror.

"The officer said my wife wasn't wearing her seat belt," he said. "As it turned out, I had an outstanding traffic violation that I had forgotten about . . . so I had to go to court."

At the courthouse, McMann ran into Lance Heflin, a consultant for America's Most Wanted. He told Heflin about Jason's murder and the frustration the family was experiencing. Heflin brought the case to the show's producers, and they assigned the case to Matthews, who had retired in 1996 as a homicide supervisor in Miami Beach.

The first episode aired in April 2000 and the second in September 2001. For more than two years, Matthews doggedly worked the case in Lock Haven.

"It was very difficult," Matthews said. "In that town, the main industry is Lock Haven University. . . . Football is very important at that school, and I think nobody wanted the university to be embarrassed."

Throughout the investigation, Sara worked with the Lock Haven men's wrestling team while winning national women's titles. Coach Anthony "Rocky" Bonomo called it a "tense and emotional" time.

"That was really rough and challenging on her. She worked so hard and was able to bring some joy back to the family with what she was able to accomplish."

The big break in the case came when Matthews interviewed former football player Jermaine Ballard, who allegedly helped place a semiconscious Jason in the car trunk. Matthews said he believed Ballard was lying and directed Lock Haven officials to track down Quincy Teel, a football player who allegedly helped Ballard, before Ballard could reach him.

Investigators arrested Smart and Williams in June 2002, and America's Most Wanted followed with an update on the capture.

In January, Ballard and Teel were arrested on kidnapping conspiracy charges.

"I think their (the TV show's) activity resulted in the police going to the right people," McKnight said.

Williams is expected to plea bargain and testify against Smart. Ballard and Teel, out on bail, also are expected to testify against Smart.

"It was probably three years before I could come to terms with everything," Sara said.

Sara says she has emerged as a "stronger person."

"I'm cheering for her at the Olympics," Matthews said. "During the darkest times, she gave her family inspiration. She's already done so much, but I can only imagine what a gold medal might do."

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CHRISTINE NORDHAGEN

Women's freestyle wrestling is the only new discipline being added to the programme in Athens and Nordhagen wants to break new ground with gold.

The Canadian is a legend in wrestling circles and will want to cap her career with another memorable victory before retiring.

The 32-year-old was winding down her activities on the mat, but the promise of a crack at the Olympics was enough for her to put those plans on hold.

Nordhagen took to the sport in 1991 and within 12 months was crowned as Canada's first national champion.

She held the honour for a decade until her winning run was wrecked by injury.

The 72kg class athlete won through a wrestle-off to secure her spot at the Games and is planning one last hurrah.

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Women’s wrestling will debut at the Athens Olympics. I will be certain to follow various nations weaknesses and strengths. Islamic terrorists may not be too happy with the women showing their skills. — Chris G., Medford

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Women's wrestling gets a grip

MARGO VARADI 8/15/04
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

The Olympic Games are upon us, and the world has gathered 'round its TV sets to wonder: where do people learn to fence? How do you get into synchronized swimming? So this summer, we've set out to answer those questions with a tour of Olympic sports through the city.

Down in the basement of a Toronto apartment building, I'm getting the workout of my life. For the next three days, my muscles will be so sore that I will barely be able to move.

Wrestling, as I'm learning from the Cabbagetown Youth Centre Thunder Olympic Wrestling Club, demands power, endurance and flexibility from the entire body.

"My biggest challenge was the fitness," says Nicole DeVeyra, 21, of her start in the sport. One of three women in our class of 15, she says, "Wrestling has taught me that no matter how tired you are, you can still give it more. It pushes you in a way you won't get pushed anywhere else."

Female wrestlers such as DeVeyra aren't alone. Fighting off negative images ranging from mud wrestlers to World Wrestling Entertainment vixens, women's wrestling makes its Olympic debut this year. Athletes from 21 nations, including Canada, will compete.

My Cabbagetown class warms up with a game of basement soccer, after which coach Bahman Sarbazi calls us together for something that feels like a military drill, which is aimed at building agility and strength. We stand in a circle as Sarbazi, a former coach for Iran's wrestling program, instructs us through push-ups, sit-ups and more. We then pair off and have a race that includes running on our haunches, performing somersaults and hand-springs and even doing back-flips, moves that prepare the body for the wrestling mat. It's a shock, given the non-competitive, work-at-your-own-pace yoga classes I'm used to. Here, it's not about doing what you can do; it's about doing what you think you can't do. The class members cheer and the atmosphere is supportive.

This is Olympic-style, on-the-mat wrestling, a direct descendant of the ancient Greek sport. It can be hard on the joints and heart; a check-up with your doctor is suggested before you give it a try. To avoid injury, I'm lent ear-protecting headgear, though I'm told injuries can be a source of pride. Peter Brown, co-ordinator at the Cabbagetown Youth Centre, calls over the coach and points to his ear. "You see how it's chewed up? Sometimes the ear gets swelled up so badly the hole doesn't even exist.

"Injuries are your badges of honour," adds Brown. "You attack the whole body from head to toe when you're wrestling, so anything and everything can get twisted or sprained."

Beginners learn how to fall, how to throw someone, how to defend themselves and how to turn a person over. "There's no punching, kicking or biting," Brown says. I'm grateful. He matches me up with the two other women in the class, DeVeyra and 23-year-old Kate Betts-Wilmott, to practise groundwork.

In one move, a wrestler will start face-down, while another goes on top and attempts to flip their opponent. "I want to let the new meat (me) try a turn but not be turned over, because she won't know how to react," Brown says.

Usually it's a while before beginners are allowed to spar; Brown is concerned that if someone attempts to turn me, I won't have the skill to avoid possible shoulder injuries. The women reassure him that they won't turn me and welcome me into their posse. Both are covered in sweat after the vigorous workout. I begin by friendly sparring with DeVeyra.

I try a couple moves, attempting to turn her, but I'm too timid. "I couldn't feel your body at all," she says. "A good wrestler should be like a fat kid on a red Smartie." In other words, there's to be no space between our sweat-drenched bodies.

"This is a sport where you roll around, touch and reach for the crotch," says Brown. "If (students) aren't comfortable with the contact, their learning curve will be slow."

Betts-Wilmott tells me the "high crotch" was the first move she learned. She demonstrates by lifting DeVeyra by the upper thigh and flipping her on to the ground. "The goal is to move a person," says Betts-Wilmott. "The first time I did it, I floored a guy . ... There's a lot less to be afraid of as a woman."

In this class, women get a lot of practice defending themselves against male opponents (some clubs divide the men and the women). "It's a good self-defence thing if you come regularly," says Brown.

"You can't just come once, learn a couple of techniques and expect it will help you."

Brown hopes this year's Olympics will encourage more women to join a sport that might seem intimidating.

"When you walk into a place like this, where everyone is so much better, stronger and skilled, it would be easy to get intimidated if the wrestling community weren't so friendly," says DeVeyra.