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Conquering upheaval
In pursuit of her passion, Patricia Miranda has been all over the map

By Clay Latimer, Rocky Mountain News
August 23, 2004

ATHENS - On Mat A, Patricia Miranda was struggling frantically to slip out of her opponent's grasp and get a fingerhold on the medal round.

In the stands, her father, Jose, was leaning forward in his seat, pale and worried.

In Northern California, Japan, Brazil and a jungle village at the mouth of the Amazon - all places the Miranda clan has called home through the years - relatives and friends anxiously awaited the news.

No one, though, needs to stress about Patricia Miranda, least of all Patricia Miranda.

"I don't care if you can beat me half the time, you're not going to beat me (Sunday)," she said.

Rising to her big moment, the 25-year-old Stanford graduate rallied to win her first match, then the second. Then, in the evening round, she breezed in her third 105.5-pound bout and advanced to the medal round today in Athens, where women are wrestling as Olympians for the first time.

Excited? Relieved? Weary?

Miranda was all that and more; in fact, it didn't take a road map to see how much emotional ground she and her family have covered to reach this day.

As Miranda wrestled in high school, opponents ridiculed her and spectators taunted her. One mother even scolded her for embarrassing her son.

And Miranda's father threatened to sue the Silicon Valley school district to keep her off the mat.

It didn't get any easier at Stanford, where she practiced with the men's team for more than four years before wrestling in her first match. She wouldn't fade away after college, either.

Deferring her first year at Yale Law School, Miranda moved to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and focused her compulsive ambition on Athens.

"Everything has been leading to this," she said.

The trip begins

The Olympics always have been about odysseys: through hard times, emotional pain, upsetting dislocation. They're also about families, and the strange trips they take.

The Miranda clan's journey is as intriguing as most - and longer, too, because it began decades ago.

In 1928, Miranda's maternal grandparents moved from Japan to Brazil, settling in a jungle village near the mouth of the Amazon River.

Because there weren't roads, they traveled by boat to the nearest village, an hour's ride away.

For amusement, the local children jumped in and out of the Amazon, playing games of chicken with deadly piranha.

"When you're fishing, you just throw in a pole with meat on it,' said Patricia, who visited her mother's childhood home after college graduation.

Brazil's great interior also is home to the Yanomami Indians, one of the world's last stone- age tribes, which is another reason for frightened-looking visitors.

"The first time it scared . . . me," Jose Miranda said. "I wanted out of there as fast as I could."

Jose's parents also were immigrants, leaving Portugal for a gritty blue-collar neighborhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Jose met his future wife, Lia, at a secondary school in Sao Paulo during a time when political upheaval preoccupied even 16-year-olds.

Coup brings change

The trouble started in 1964 when military leaders toppled a democratically elected government in a coup, replacing the president with a general. Despite the threat of police repression, university and high school students poured out onto the streets for constant marches.

On Dec. 13, 1968, fearful of the specter of more student rallies, Brazil's armed forces signed Institutional Act No. 5, suspending civil rights guarantees and giving the executive branch power over the legislature and the judiciary.

Students were kicked off the streets and faculties were purged of leftist teachers. After the kidnapping of U.S. ambassador Charles Elbrick in September 1969, the regime turned increasingly to systematic torture, killing and injuring thousands.

Artists, student leaders and left-wing intellectuals fled the county en masse.

"Everyone was against the military at that point," Jose Miranda said. "Practically every student in university and secondary school would be involved in some way. The schools would close and your teachers would disappear. Students were being singled out for torture."

Miranda discusses the era only reluctantly, although he wrote about it in a journal that he gave to Patricia when she turned 18.

"I think he and my mother were both natural leaders and they were in positions at the university to be in leadership roles," she said. "Since he did operate in those circles, where talking was a liability, he still has a little of that paranoia, where he says: 'I don't want too much of this in print.'

"I have so much respect for he and my mother, to have so much passion for something that it requires you to risk so much. And it was high risk. They knew they had to leave when close friends or companions started disappearing and being tortured."

Difficult journey begins

Desperate to escape, Jose and Lia hastily devised a plan: hitchhike and hop trains to the western border, disappear into Chile, then travel to Canada.

"You had to travel with someone else's passports, and if you didn't have one . . . well, you couldn't afford to be seen," Patricia said.

"So they jumped on trains and jumped off when the inspectors made their rounds. When they went through the Chilean mountains, my mom had to stay outside the train for a long time. She got really ill. There were some close calls."

After settling in Canada, Lia earned a doctorate in psychology and began a research career. She also gave birth to her first child, Andrea, and was six months pregnant with Patricia when the family moved to California.

Jose finished medical school and set up a clinic to treat Portuguese immigrants, and Lia continued her research work and gave birth to two boys. As the years passed, the Mirandas came to embody the California dream: plush home, new cars, first-rate schools, four children, an affluent lifestyle. They even had a nanny, though Lia ran a tight ship.

"She was such an efficient, quiet, bright woman," Patricia said. "Every day she came home at 3 to help us with our studies. We'd have a 11/2-hour study session. Who has 11/2 hours of homework in second grade?"

Lia suffered an aneurysm at 40, then lapsed into a coma for two weeks. Patricia was taking a test when she was pulled from class and taken home, where a psychologist broke the news.

"We were in my father's music room - he loves music - and he didn't know quite what to say. So the woman just said: 'We're not going to be able to help your mother,' " she said.

"They had to pull the plug; she was brain- dead, basically. All my siblings were crying. I was sitting there, and finally I just said: 'You pulled me out of a math test in order to tell me this? If you can't bring her back, I might as well do well on my test.'

"It was really messed up, I just went back to school that day. It was kind of a defense mechanism."

Beginning over at 10

Reeling from her mother's death and worried about her own mortality at 10, Miranda knew she had to change her life.

"The idea that my life could be one-fourth over really hit me hard," she said. "I wanted to explore who I am, I wanted to feel things, I wanted to make a minute last longer than 60 seconds. But my life was devoid of challenges."

When a physical education teacher formed a wrestling team at Redwood Middle School in 1990, Miranda followed her buddies to the first practice. She was stunned by the aggression.

Eventually, she was hooked.

"It made me seem so alive," she said. "So many times it seems like I live a lifetime in a practice."

Those were alarming words to her father, who had little interest in American sports, much less wrestling.

"I thought it was very unbecoming for a lady - and very violent," he said. "I was so much under the water after (my wife) wife died. Sometimes I don't even remember how I did it. My wife took care of everything. Whatever the kids had to do, I was (unaware) of."

Realizing that Patricia's passion wasn't fading, Jose threatened to sue the district for allowing her to wrestle. As tempers cooled, he agreed to strike a deal with his daughter: Earn straight A's and you can wrestle.

"Academics are very important to us," he said. "We're the children of immigrants."

Criticism stings

Miranda joined the team at Saratoga High School, confident in her ability to win some matches. Surviving the verbal abuse was another matter. Opponents laughed at her, made sexual innuendos, dismissed her with cold stares.

None of it rattled Miranda - until she lost a one-sided match.

"You're a joke," someone screamed.

Leaning against a bathroom wall minutes later, Miranda broke down.

"People were picking at my hopes," she said. "The fact that they might be right kept me going. I told myself: 'I'm not going to stop until I know. If I'm a joke, then I want to know if I was delusional.' "

In her junior and senior years, Miranda served as team captain, finishing her final season with several impressive victories.

Stanford was another matter. Four years of losing practice matches wore on her, though she never considered leaving the team. In her fifth season, one team member quit and another became sick, which elevated Miranda to the top spot. Although she won only one match, in an invitational in Reno, Nev., she was more interested than ever in the sport.

During Miranda's Stanford days, she began dating wrestling teammate Levi Weikel-Magden, who is helping coach her in Athens. As graduation neared, they began mapping out a blueprint for the 2004 Olympics.

That didn't sit well with Jose, who remained indifferent to his daughter's passion. What he didn't want to think of, he didn't begin to speak of.

But on the eve of the 2003 World Championships, Patricia's sister pulled him aside and read him the riot act.

"She was like: 'This is a world championship, and it is in the United States; you have to go,' " Patricia said.

Added Jose: "It was time for me to live up to my side of the bargain."

Miranda advanced to the final, but when she lost to two-time champion Irina Melnik of Ukraine, she started sobbing uncontrollably.

"When he saw me in the finals, I think it hit him: This isn't just a pastime," she said. "He realized that I'm actually good, like the best in the world. And then he saw me after the finals - I was cut in half emotionally. He's never seen anybody care so much for anything."

'Something special'

Sunday in Athens, Jose Miranda looked like any other wrestling parent. Worried, excited, relieved, thankful - he couldn't keep track of his emotions. But when Patricia won her third and final bout of the day, he seemed exhausted.

"There are so many things going through my mind," he said. "The moment is more than I thought it would be. The Olympics are something special."

Asked if he had thought about Lia, dead now for 13 years, he said: "Oh, yeah. . . . She would have been here, shouting and bragging."

Then Miranda turned away, his eyes moist.

He could have had a different life. After Brazil's military government was toppled in the late 1980s, the political exiles from the '60s were invited to come home. But Jose decided to remain in his American home.

"He never really melded with the culture," Patricia said. "It's always been a little foreign for him.

"It was his daydream to go back to Brazil. But he wouldn't do it because of his children; he wanted to give us the best life. I don't know what my life would have been like if we had lived in Brazil. Thank God, we didn't."

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Finally Out of Its Holding Pattern
Women's wrestling, after years of frustration and false starts, makes its long-delayed debut.

By Steve Springer, Times Staff Writer 2/23/04

ATHENS — After years of lobbying and cajoling and trying to persuade in various tongues, after predictions unfulfilled and dreams unrealized, after watching from the shadows as their male counterparts got gold and glory, female wrestlers finally got on the mats Sunday in their very own Olympic competition.

The sport's Olympic debut came at 9:30 a.m. at the Ano Liossia Olympic Hall, where Stayroula Zygouri of Greece faced Stephanie Gross of Germany.

So what was it like, not only having women's wrestling begin in one's homeland, but getting the additional honor of being the first to compete?

Shrug.

"It's too early in the morning to wrestle," Zygouri said.

Others were not so blase.

Tricia Sanders is a coach for the U.S. team, which began the day with four wrestlers in the competition: Patricia Miranda (105.5 pounds), Tela O'Donnell (121), Sara McMann (138.75) and Toccara Montgomery (158.5). Sanders is the most decorated female wrestler in U.S. history with four gold medals and a silver in world competition. Yet she was forced to watch from the sideline as the bureaucratic battle to bring her sport to the Olympics raged on.

"We were told it might happen in '92, '96 and 2000," Sanders said as competition was waged in the background. "It's sad that we didn't see this in my day. I trained for three Olympics and then had to sit and watch when it didn't happen. But that's OK because it's happening now."

Olympic officials weren't the only ones who resisted legitimizing women's wrestling. The U.S. women can all tell stories of struggles they had to be accepted long after other women's sports had become a part of the national fabric.

McMann's entry into the sport wasn't an act of defiance, but rather one of obedience.

"My brother was a wrestler," she said, "and I was his wrestling dummy, whether I wanted to be or not."

By the time she got to high school, in Marion, N.C., McMann was excited about wrestling, even though she was the only girl on the team.

"My coach thought I might get hurt, or that I was only doing it to get attention," McMann said. "Finally, he realized that there was no way I would work three hours a day in high school at wrestling if I just wanted to get attention or be around boys."

Miranda's father, a physician, was concerned that wrestling in high school would cost his daughter time she needed to pursue academics. On occasion, he would show up at school and pull her out of wrestling. He wouldn't even discuss the sport with her.

"When we would talk, wrestling never came up," Miranda said. "When I was away at competition, he would never ask how I did. As long as I didn't bring wrestling up, we could be friends."

Today, their relationship is better than ever, she said. Jose Miranda concedes his daughter was right to pursue her passion for wrestling. And Patricia will satisfy her father's passion for academic excellence by entering Yale Law School in the fall.

Jose was in attendance Sunday, cheering Patricia on as she and McMann advanced to today's semifinal round.

Sanders said opinion on women's wrestling has been "all over the board."

"There were people who thought women wrestling would bring the world down," she said. "And there were people thinking it was a great thing for women. Us, we were just having fun."

For Montgomery, becoming a wrestler was an in-your-face response. "When wrestling came to my high school [East Technical in Cleveland], I was advised against joining the team," she said. "Everybody knows that when you tell a teenager not to do something, they are going to do it."

O'Donnell can relate to that.

"In junior high, I was the first girl to wrestle," she said. "If I beat a boy, the other boys would get upset and the parents wouldn't want me to wrestle their sons."

While helping to change Olympic wrestling, the U.S. team is also changing the image of female wrestling. "When people think of wrestlers, they expect us to be bigger, with maybe two teeth missing, have a hunchback or look like some kind of ogre," McMann said.

Not this group. Miranda and O'Donnell could pass for gymnasts. .

"One of the great things about being in the Olympics is that you don't have to have the obligatory 10-minute conversation with someone when they find out you are a women wrestler," Sanders said. "You won't have to explain what it's all about. People will know from watching the Olympics."

Said O'Donnell, after competing Sunday: "This is huge. We get to show what we do to the world. This is so much bigger than just me."

It may have taken an extra century to get started — male wrestling was introduced at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis — but the women have finally arrived.

Now if they can only do something about that early starting time….

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Americans Win Silver and Bronze in Women's Wrestling

By DAMON HACK

Published: August 23, 2004

THENS, Aug. 23 — The bouquet in her hands shook once the tears came. Her face was pale, her eyes stained red. A silver medal dangled from her neck and Sara McMann wanted nothing to do with it.

"I don't think there is anything more painful in the world," she said.

This was minutes after McMann's gold medal match today in women's wrestling against Kaori Icho of Japan, minutes after Icho had come from behind to wrest the title from McMann with three consecutive takedowns in the final round to win, 3-2.

As Ano Liossia Olympic Hall became awash in Japanese flags, McMann could hardly see straight. The bridge of her nose was bloody. She had lost a contact lens.

In one tense bout, McMann had captured the raw emotion of this new Olympic sport, one in which the competitors grappled with frayed nerves, acute pain and each other.

"Those are real emotions, those are real tears,'` Terry Steiner, the United States' wrestling coach, said after watching McMann. "How do you get rid of pain? Most of the time, time is the only thing that gets rid of pain."

McMann, who competed in the 63-kilogram (138.75-pound) weight class, finished the highest among American wrestlers here. Patricia Miranda, at 48 kilograms (105.5 pounds), won a bronze medal today when she defeated Angelique Berthenet of France. But Miranda, too, felt tinges of emptiness.

In her semifinal match against Irini Merlini of Ukraine, the eventual gold-medal champion, Miranda had been soundly beaten.

"Winning a medal helps," Miranda said. "It's an honor to see your flag raised and your country represented. But every time you wished it, it was gold."

Some, perhaps, wished too hard. When the five-time world champion, Kyoko Hamaguchi of Japan, suffered an upset loss to China's Wang Xu and had to settle for bronze, Hamaguchi's father, a former pro wrestler nicknamed "The Animal," had to be restrained by Greek police officers because he was so angry.

Then there was Icho's older sister, Chiharu, who came in second to Merlini in the 105-pound class and felt as if she had let down Japan.

"I feel sorry about my silver medal," she said through an interpreter. "My emotions are full of regret. The word joy is not what I'm feeling at all."

Miranda, who will start at Yale Law School next week, said she had felt admiration for Chiharu Icho. To Miranda, Icho was speaking the language of an athlete, a language that critics and doubters of her new sport better get used to hearing, she said.

"One event won't stop all of the prejudice," Miranda said. "It's a slow convincing, but more girls will compete and guys will watch and see the triumph and the heartbreak and say, `I know how that felt.' "

McMann's emotions seemed so personal, so unusual, that she had difficulty expressing them. Of the four American women who competed in this inaugural Olympic sport, McMann had wrestled the longest, starting at age 3 with her brother, Jason, who was 6.

Jason had been her model, her hero, and he was taken away from her more than five years ago, beaten up in a bar fight and left to die in the woods near Lock Haven, Pa. His body was discovered by the police.

Last year, McMann became a Pan-American Games champion and a silver medalist in the world championships, also losing to Icho. She had worked as hard as she could, McMann said, and today it just was not good enough.

She stood through the Japanese national anthem, her eyes never leaving the floor. She went through all the pomp and circumstance of posing for pictures, a smile never crossing her face.

She was asked about her brother.

"That happened a long time ago," McMann said. "Time eased the pain. It only helps to know that my brother would be proud of me either way."

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Canadian wrestler takes silver medal

Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc 8/23/04

Athens — During moments of self-doubt when Tonya Verbeek considered giving up wrestling, her mom offered some advice: Don't worry, you'll win when it counts.

And that's exactly what happened earlier this year when Verbeek defeated rival Jen Ryz to earn a spot on the Canadian Olympic team for Athens, where women's wrestling was to make its Olympic debut.

"After she won the trials, she phoned us right away and that was the first thing she said, 'Mom, you were right,"' recalled Kathy Verbeek. "And of course I said, 'Moms are always right."'

Kathy was in the crowd Monday, shiny gold and red maple leaf stickers stuck on her cheeks, to watch her daughter capture a silver medal in the 55-kilogram division at the Olympic Games, beaten 6-0 by two-time world champion Saori Yoshida of Japan in the final.

The result caps several years of ups and downs for Verbeek, who has toiled in a deep 55-kilogram class in Canada.

After winning the national title and finishing fifth at the world championships in 1995, the 27-year-old from Beamsville, Ont., has placed second or third at the senior national championships five times since then, never making it back to the worlds.

There were days when she just didn't know if it was worth the effort to continue.

"There was other things going on and I thought it's not happening for me so why am I bothering," said Verbeek, whose father Jerry was also in the stands Monday. "But it was really because I wasn't training as hard and committing myself. It was all or nothing and I had to decide. So I decided that I had to pick it up and started making strides."

She came into these Games in the shadow of six-time world champion Christine Nordhagen of Calgary, who was touted as Canada's biggest medal threat.

"I might have not been put in the papers but that doesn't matter," said Verbeek, who ended the Games with a 3-1 record. "I knew I was coming here to compete because I worked my butt off. So I expect the best of myself and that's what I did these last two days."

Nordhagen ended up fifth.

For her coach Marty Calder, a former Olympic wrestler himself, Verbeek's silver medal was especially satisfying.

"I had a lot of confidence in her physical ability to be successful at this level," said Calder. "You can say you're going to do it, you can think you're going to do it but going and doing it is a different thing. And today she did it."

Meanwhile, Nordhagen won the fifth-place bout in the 72-kilogram division when her opponent, Anita Schaetzle of Germany, retired with an injury. Nordhagen had beaten American Toccara Montgomery earlier in the day to advance. Viola Yanik of Saskatoon defeated Volha Khilko of Belarus 5-2 to take fifth spot in the 63-kilogram class. That followed a win over Stephanie Gross of Germany 4-1. Lyndsay Belisle of Hazelton, B.C., failed to advance out of the preliminary round in the 48-kilogram class.

Being one of the dominant countries in the sport, Canada's female wrestlers went into the Games with high hopes.

"I can't say I'm disappointed," said Canadian women's coach Leigh Vierling, who is married to Nordhagen. "We had some really tough opponents. To give you an indication, against the U.S., the No. 2 team in the world last year, we've gone 3-0 against that team head-to-head. They're one of the best wrestling nations in the world."

Verbeek said winning one of the first Olympic medals in women's wrestling was special.

"Maybe I haven't digested it all and I still need to take it all in but right now, it feels great," she said. "There are so many people who are a part of this and I just happen to be the one who stepped on the mat today."

Yoshida, a two-time world champion, has dominated the 55-kilogram class, winning every international competition she has entered, a streak Verbeek never really threatened.

"There are some strategic things I could have maybe done a little big different," said Verbeek. "But I really did give it my all. I'd say I'm happy but I'm not satisfied."

Verbeek defeated Ida-Theres Karlsson of Sweden 3-1 in the semifinals while Yoshida beat Anna Gomis of France 7-6 in a close bout.

While the 9,000-seat Ano Liossia Olympic Hall wasn't full, several hundred Japanese fans made it feel as if it were bursting at the seams, waving flags, banging symbols and blowing horns every time one of their athletes was on the mat.

The Canadian contingent attempted to drown the Japanese out with a chorus of 'Let's go Canada.' But they were outnumbered. When Yoshida finally won, the crowd erupted.

But the Japanese were quieted after Irini Merleni of Ukraine defeated Chiharu Icho of Japan in the 48-kilogram final to become the first the first female Olympic gold medallist. Merleni was so excited with the victory she leapt into the referee's arms and wrapped her legs around his waist before dropping to floor for some vigorous fist-pumping. Atop the medal podium, she wept as her Ukrainian fans chanted her name.

Japan's dominant women's team was also disappointed when Kyoko Hamaguchi was upset by 18-year-old Wang Xu of China 6-4 in the semifinals of the 72-kilogram class.

There was confusion throughout the final two minutes because the actual score repeatedly differed from that on the scoreboard, possibly affecting how Hamaguchi wrestled.

The outcome so angered her father, longtime Japanese pro wrestling star Heigo (The Animal) Hamaguchi, that police restrained him from running onto the mat.

"We have been training very hard together, 365 days a year, for many years together," his daughter said in his defence. "When we experience a loss, both of us share the feeling of depression together."

Wang went on to defeat Gouzel Maniourova of Russia 7-2.

Kaori Icho of Japan defeated Sara McMann of the U.S., 3-2 at 63 kilograms.

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Dream is over, but Olympics 'not about the medals'

By DEBI RUHL 8/23/04
Herald-Tribune staff

Christine Nordhagen's Olympic dream ended early Sunday morning but the Canadian and world wrestling champion can still look back on her brilliant career with an enormous amount of perspective.

However, the 33-year-old pride of Valhalla Centre just didn't know she would find it in front of a worldwide audience of millions.

Results aside, when Nordhagen entered the opening ceremonies at the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, just over a week ago, she knew she was there for more than Olympic gold.

"I realized what it was all about. I really felt a lot of pressure and stress before I got here," she said on the phone from Athens. "Once I was actually here, it was like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.

"It's not about the medals. The Olympics is about athletes coming together to compete. It's about sportsmanship, fair play and giving it your best shot. The opening ceremonies opened my eyes to that.

"During training, it was all about me in my own little world. I was losing perspective. There are 266 other (Canadian) athletes here. My performance isn't the only one."

By opening the round robin with a loss to China's Wang Xu on Sunday, Nordhagen's medal chances were gone in an instant.

In her later match Sunday, Nordhagen defeated Italy's Katarzyna Juszczak. After a win over American Toccara Montgomery this morning, the best she can hope for is a fifth-place finish.

"The margin between a win and a loss is so small," she said. "It's not the end of the world. Life goes on and I realize I'm lucky to be here."

Nordhagen is a six-time world and 10-time national women's freestyle wrestling champion and is the most decorated athlete in the history of her sport, which is being contested on the Olympic stage for the very first time.

A teacher at Ernest Manning high school in Calgary, she has been wrestling for 12 years and considered retirement after being sidelined by a knee injury in 2002-03. Even without an Olympic medal, she plans on competing for one more year and hopes to finish on top at the next world championships.

"I know that I've won the worlds six times and I have the ability to be the best," she said.

Nordhagen's journey to the Olympic stage has not been without an outpouring of support from family, friends and even random strangers.

"I can't even describe it. It's absolutely overwhelming, but in a good way," she said, noting her parents Norman and Lillian, husband and coach Leigh Vierling and many family members made the trek to Greece to watch her compete.

"There has been so much great support from my family and from people visiting my website. Most people don't get an opportunity to hear great things like that about themselves so that was good for my confidence."

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Wrestling: It's women's turn to take to the mat

Weiner, Star Tribune
August 22, 2004 OLYWRES0822

ATHENS -- The trainer twirled a cotton swab on the bridge of her nose to dry beads of blood. A black and blue mark shined from her left cheek. Another multicolored bruise punctuated her left shoulder. Sweat soaked through her blue uniform.

Tela O'Donnell was exhausted, beat up and smiling.

She was the new symbol of Olympic wrestling and, indeed, women's sports.

This scene occurred three months ago in Indianapolis when O'Donnell, 21, became one of four pioneers to earn spots on the first U.S. Olympic women's wrestling team.

Today, she, Patricia Miranda, Sara McMann and Toccara Montgomery will join 46 women from 20 other nations in the preliminary matches of the first Olympic women's wrestling tournament.

For NBC and promoters of international wrestling, women's inclusion "does provide for some curiosity opportunities," said Rich Bender, executive director of USA Wrestling. "But the legitimacy of women's wrestling will speak for itself. Technically, it will surprise a lot of people."

Said O'Donnell, "Just take us seriously."

Females, of course, have been wrestling with brothers and boys down the street forever and internationally against each other since 1987. The University of Minnesota-Morris had one of the nation's few women's teams before dropping the program last year.

While adding women to the wrestling program this year, the International Olympic Committee limited their weight categories to four; men have seven each in freestyle and Greco-Roman.

Just as there is divergence in size and weight in wrestling, the personalities and backgrounds of the historic first four members of the U.S. women's wrestling team run the gamut.

Miranda, 25, recently graduated from Stanford, where one of her classmates was former First Child Chelsea Clinton. Miranda will enter Yale Law School as soon as the Olympics end.

Her Brazilian-born father, Jose, was adamantly opposed to her wrestling, but she overcame his objections by promising to maintain a 4.0 grade-point average in high school.

She trained with the Stanford men's team and won one match against a wrestler from a small Oregon college, but she never names him.

"I could tell he was sort of upset when he shook my hand," she said. "I said, 'Listen, your name's never coming up.' "

O'Donnell, 22, grew up in tiny Homer, Alaska, playing football in high school and "growing up in the woods with sheep," she said.

Homer is also the hometown of Tom Bodett, of the "We'll leave the lights on" Motel 6 commercials, and singer Jewel.

O'Donnell's mother, Claire, was trained to be a mime, once studying under Marcel Marceau, but turned to other jobs.

"Homer is a good place to raise a kid," said Tela O'Donnell, "but not a good place to have a mime career."

As a little girl, McMann, 23, learned to wrestle with her brother, Jason, who was three years older.

"I was his beat-up dummy," said McMann, who wrestled for Minnesota-Morris. "I was wrestling when I didn't want to."

But in 1999 Jason was killed, apparently in a drug-related incident, near Lock Haven, Pa., where he was wrestling and going to college.

His alleged murderers were tracked down by the television show "America's Most Wanted." A trial is pending.

She said she will be thinking of him when she takes the mat today.

Montgomery, 21, also has a crime linked to her; her father's.

Paul Montgomery is in prison for a 1998 double murder with no chance of getting out of jail until 2032.

As it turns out, around the time her father was convicted, her high school in Cleveland added wrestling. Montgomery, who had played basketball, volleyball and softball, turned to the sport.

Here she is in Athens where wrestling is a remnant of antiquity.

"To be an Olympian and a pioneer in Athens is unbelievable," she said, a tongue stud shining through as she spoke.

Does she wear that when she competes?

She lowered her voice, and looked around so no one would hear.

"Just between us, I keep it in," she said.

In the end, the debut of women's wrestling comes down to two opposing questions, said U.S. coach Terry Steiner, who has heard from male colleagues who worry that women will steal the sport's thunder.

"They tend to look for why not to support [women's wrestling] and why they shouldn't," Steiner said. "The question they're asking is, 'Why women's wrestling?' I throw back, 'Why not women's wrestling?' "

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Through It All, Miranda Has Kept Her Grip

By Michael Wilbon

Monday, August 23, 2004; Page D09

ATHENS

This is the easiest part of the journey. No way competing in the
Olympics could be as hard as getting here, as hard as losing every single
wrestling match for four years in college because she had to wrestle men since
there was no women's team. No way anything awaiting her here in Athens could
test Patricia Miranda the way she was tested as a freshman in high school,
the day her father left work three hours early and drove 16 miles to snatch
her out of practice. There's nothing here that can get to her the way a boy
did junior year in high school when he called her "a joke" and she ran into
the bathroom, bawling and wondering, "Is it possible it's true, that I am a
joke?"

If there were an Olympic gold medal awarded for determination, for a
dogged yet strangely pure pursuit of a seemingly unattainable goal, Miranda
would be on my short list to win it. It was entirely fitting, on the very
first day women wrestled in the Olympics, that Miranda would distinguish
herself by winning all three of her matches for the U.S. team.

"I don't care if people initially tune in to see if we're anything more
than a side joke, if we're going to be mud wrestling, or if they think it's
sexy," Miranda said. "This gave us a platform from which to speak, to
say, 'Hey look at us.' You see the sweat, you see the tears, the pain and
the happiness." It's mostly happiness for Miranda, 25, and for 23-year-old
Sara McMann, a native of Takoma Park, who both advanced to Monday's
semifinals.

But of course, it's what you can't see that truly qualifies as Olympic,
regardless of whether either woman wins a medal here.

Miranda grew up in northern California, raised primarily by her father,
Jose, after her mother, Lia, died. And her father, to this day, cares
primarily about one thing. "Education," he said Sunday, five minutes
before his daughter's third match of the day. "It's the most important thing.
You can be great at sports and lose all the money in the world."

When Jose, a doctor, pulled his daughter out of practice, he told her
she had to have A's to participate in anything, the same way he once pulled
her sister, Andrea, out of a school play. Miranda told him, "Fine, I'll
give you a 4.0 and you let me do what I want to do."

So she wrestled boys in high school, was captain of the team as a
junior when somebody called her a joke. "I really wanted to know whether I was
a joke, whether I was delusional," she said one day recently. "And if it
took me the 10 years to figure it out, then fine. But I wanted to know about
myself."

Well, she'd find out at Stanford, which didn't have women's wrestling.
Only a handful of schools did when she started college. It was late in high
school before she wrestled a girl for the first time. "I lost every
single match for four years in open tournaments," she said. "Reporters say
now, 'You never lose. Do you know what it's like to lose?' And I say, 'Try
four years of never winning.' "

So what was the point? Why does a pretty young girl, 5 feet and 105
pounds, pursuing degrees in economics and international policy need to thrash
around on a mat with grown men? God knows it doesn't pay a dime.

It turns out, very simply, that looking for excruciatingly difficult
stuff to do is Miranda's thing. She felt uncomfortable with children, so she
became a counselor at Stanford's summer sports camp and wouldn't stop
until she was running the whole program. When she was losing every single
match in college, "I was learning about my character," she said. "I'd go home
after practice and I'd write down goals for the next day in practice, like,
'Score one point in practice today.' Being proud of myself was more important
than the outcome. In high school, I wrestled guys who hadn't hit puberty
yet. But in college, they were men and it was different."

To make it worse, she never had her dad to talk to about how difficult
it was, how badly she was suffering from a strain or contusion. While she
believes her father was "not an obstacle, just misguided; I knew he'd
come around," she said after her final match Sunday night, "There was a good
six, seven years where wrestling wasn't part of our relationship."

And anyone having this conversation with Miranda comes back repeatedly
to why continue with something that seemingly produced no tangible reward?

"Because I wanted to explore myself," she said. "Because it enabled me
to stumble on things I wanted to fix. Some days I wasn't very proud. Did I
run or did I fight? I had to ask the question and I had to accept the
responsibility if I had run. I never said, 'I'm a girl,' or 'I'm
short.' I ought, even though you're short you could have made a better stand.
It was so hard, and there was nowhere to hide, nobody to hide behind. It's so
combative and so primitive. I just think it's the basic, simplest
sport."

Behind Miranda as she talked, though she couldn't see him, was her
father, now proud as can be. "Basically in awe," Jose said. "No I never
imagined this -- never. As it turned out, she's in the right time and the right
place. Three years from now she'd be too old and four years ago" women
didn't wrestle in the Olympic Games.

"But I didn't do very much. I wanted her to excel academically, and she
did. I never talked to her about the technical aspects of it. She never
discusses with me the moves or what she does, to thrive under that pressure. . .
.
She'd go weeks without scoring. How she found the strength . . . she
was basically wrestling with herself."

Patricia told the story of her father coming to watch her wrestle in
New York last year at the world championships where she says: "His full
conversion took place. I got all the way to the finals, where I lost,
5-4 [to Irina Merlini of Ukraine, her opponent again on Monday], and when I
saw him afterward he said, 'Oh my God, you can really compete.' And I said,
'What do you think I've been doing all these years?' "

So, the journey has brought her here, where on Monday she may turn out
to win a gold medal in the first Olympic wrestling competition for women.
And just as she ascends to the top, and she realizes this goal, she'll quit
wrestling. No savoring the moment, no enjoying the view from the top,
no hanging around to soak up praise. Next week, Patricia Miranda is going
to law school. Not just to law school, but to Yale, the top-ranked law
school in America. "And I've got two days to get there," she said.
"Registration is Sept. 2. I'm interested in arbitration, and surprisingly I don't like
winner-take-all. I like that people can come to a consensus."

It's the chase, silly. It's the journey that fascinates and invigorates
Miranda and Yale is her new journey. "Once I know I can do something .
. . "
she said, not finishing the sentence but not needing to. "If I can live
my whole life that way, I'll be the happiest person in the world."