US wrestler Patricia Miranda LAW '07 poses on the podium after winning the women 48Kg wrestling bronze medal, at the Ano Liossia stadium at the 2004 Olympic Games, 23 August 2004 in Athens. (AFP)
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Miranda LAW '07 wins women's wrestling bronze
BY JACOB LEIBENLUFT AND WILL SULLIVAN
Staff Reporters 8/25/04
|
US wrestler Patricia Miranda LAW '07 poses on the podium after winning the women 48Kg wrestling bronze medal, at the Ano Liossia stadium at the 2004 Olympic Games, 23 August 2004 in Athens. (AFP) |
Patricia Miranda LAW '07 won a bronze medal in women's wrestling Monday, becoming the first-ever Olympic medalist in the new event.
Miranda, who was considered a contender for the gold medal in the 48-kilogram (105.5 pound) category, soundly defeated Angelique Berthenet of France in the bronze medal match after a semifinal loss to Ukrainian Irina Merleni.
Despite making it to the medal stand, Miranda, 25, expressed disappointment about her performance in Athens, where she fell to the same opponent she lost to in the 2003 World Championships finals.
"You visualize it so many times, getting the gold, that it stings a little bit," Miranda said. "But I'm pretty excited."
Against Merleni, the American was unable to earn a single technical point, losing by a final score of 9-0. But against Berthenet, Miranda overcame an early deficit to resoundingly win, 12-4.
In Olympic wrestling, points are awarded for accomplishing different holds and techniques during a match. If neither wrestler has pinned their opponent after six minutes of a bout, the wrestler with the most points is declared the winner.
Because the 48-kilogram bronze medal match was held before the gold medal bout or the finals in any of the other three weight classes, Miranda was the first female wrestler to earn a medal. Merleni went on to defeat Japanese wrestler Chiharu Icho to win the gold in the lightest weight class for women.
Miranda, who had about five hours of lag time between her semifinal loss and her win in the third-place match, said she struggled to rebuild her confidence after the morning loss.
"It just took some time to realize there's some pride in showing that Americans bounce back," Miranda said.
Miranda is no stranger to coming back from defeat – at Stanford, where she competed on the men's varsity team, she went four years without winning a single match before finally earning a victory as a fifth-year senior.
But even as she struggled to hold her own against male competitors as a Cardinal, she established herself as one of the world's best female wrestlers by winning a gold medal in the Pan-American Games and placing in several other international competitions.
Miranda, who gained permission to defer a year from Yale Law to train for the Olympics in Colorado Springs, also became one of the sport's foremost spokeswomen – appearing on NBC's "Today" show and earning spreads in Newsweek and Time.
Miranda, a California native, said that after the closing ceremonies Aug. 29, she plans to travel directly to New Haven, where she will register as a first-year law student next week.
Steve Buddie, who coached Miranda at Stanford, said her victory could increase interest among women in the sport, even if it is unlikely to enter into the mainstream.
"I have to believe that it will do nothing but good things for women's wrestling," Buddie said.
In comments posted on the USA Wrestling Web site, national team coach Terry Steiner said Miranda will likely look back with pride on her bronze medal.
"She may not like it right now, but I guarantee 10 years from now she'll cherish it," Steiner said. "She'll hurt, she wanted the gold, but she'll bounce back. Bronze is still a medal."
Miranda was the second Yale University student to medal in Athens, bringing Yale's all-time medal tally to 104. Last week, fencer Sada Jacobson '06 became the first woman ever to medal in women's sabre, winning bronze in another event that was introduced to the Olympics in 2004.
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Coming up short can bring tears to tough women
Wrestler Sara McMann struggled with her emotions Monday.
Gary R. Blockus 8/25/04
Of The Morning Call
ATHENS, Greece | Sara McMann may be the toughest woman in the United States, but on Monday night, she was reduced to tears.
McMann cried after losing to Japan's Kaori Icho in the gold-medal final of the 63-kilogram (138.5-pound) class in the first-ever Olympic wrestling tournament for women. She continued to cry on the podium, head hanging, as if winning a silver medal brought her shame instead of an olive branch laurel.
She continued to cry at the post-match interview nearly 30 minutes after her 3-2 loss,
And even two hours later, at a press conference to showcase her and bronze-medal winner Patricia Miranda (48-kilos), she got teary-eyed.
A week ago, these same women sat in a different press conference, announcing that they, as athletes, had arrived, that women can compete in the same sports men can, and that they demanded respect.
McMann's teary appearance following the match was certainly understandable, and her tears and posture on the podium made the moment heartfelt and deep reaching.
Some may chide McMann's honest emotion. But perspective is important. Iranian men regularly cry uncontrollably after they lose matches, sobbing as though they've experienced deep personal tragedy. The risks and rewards of person-to-person combat are great, and emotion pours out.
''It's shortly after the match,'' U.S. women's coach Terry Steiner said. ''They deserve the right to feel the pain. It's the one thing they earned. It's a natural consequence of their dreams remaining unfulfilled.''
Both women spoke eloquently of their quest to win an Olympic gold medal. Indeed, both said it was the coveted prize after winning silver medals at the 2003 World Championships at Madison Square Garden last September.
''In many ways, this is different, because after Worlds, there was always Athens,'' said the Stanford-educated, Yale law-bound Miranda. ''In New York, it stung . I can compare it to a superficial cut, like it stings, versus a heart attack … The only thing to shut it down was knowing there was Athens … Now, there's a finality.''
Perhaps a finality for the gold medal hopes, but not for the thousands of young women wrestlers who saw McMann and Miranda step on the podium and don Olympic medals.
When McMann was asked what one thing she'd like to see happen with women's wrestling, she thought for a moment then said: ''I'd get more publicity for it. The more people exposed to it, the more people see it, the more perceptions will change.''
Even if the U.S. women didn't bring home a gold medal, they did achieve one of their dreams, setting foot on the Olympic stage.
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Wrestling: For the love of the game
Christopher Clarey IHT
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Women celebrate their inclusion in Olympic wrestling
ATHENS They had been waiting 108 years for this opportunity, nearly
3,000 if you want to start the timeline with the male-only Games organized by
the ancient Greeks. And as the first women wrestlers won their Olympic gold
medals one by one on Monday night, they made it abundantly clear that
it had been worth the wait.
Irini Merleni of Ukraine jumped into the referee's arms. Saori Yoshida
of Japan did back handsprings on the mat.
Her teammate Kaori Icho got a victory ride worthy of a matador on her
coach's shoulders, and the Chinese teenager Wang Xu skipped around the
interior of Ano Liossia Olympic Hall with her national flag as if she
were a five-year-old who had just been handed her first balloon.
There is nothing quite like the first time, and this was not merely the
first time on sport's grandest stage for these women but the first time
for any women in their sport.
It was a familiar scene for someone who has already attended coming-out
parties over the years for women pole vaulters, women marathoners and
women ice hockey players. But that made it no less touching to watch all that
practiced skill and missionary zeal in full motion and emotion.
Is there any good reason to keep tending a few remnants of the Olympic
gate? To keep saying no out of habit when there are hard-working,
hard-playing women perfectly willing and able to put their bodies on the line on
sports formerly restricted to men?
The answer now seems obvious: If the women have the desire and enough
of a talent pool to make it interesting, let them in: the boxers, the ski
jumpers, the decathletes, all of them.
On Monday, the greatest compliment to trail-blazers like Merleni and
the Icho sisters from Japan was that the curiosity factor was fleeting. It
quickly became much more interesting to see who would win and how they
would react than to dwell on the titillating detail that these were women
grappling with each other, blackening each other's eyes, scuffing up
each other's noses and putting each other in compromising positions that
would have caused an uproar not long ago in most Western nations - and would
still cause one in some devoutly Muslim nations today.
But then the Olympics are always near the end of the sports pioneer's
road: a recompense and recognition for cultural barriers already confronted
and knocked over instead of an integral part of the revolution. There have
been even more barriers than usual for women in wrestling because of its
bellicose, close-quarter character.
"I probably can't count how many people were sort of skeptical about my
wrestling," said Patricia Miranda of the United States, who won the
bronze medal in the under-48 kilo division, the lightest of the four Olympic
classes.
"That was mainly because I wrestled only with guys through high school
and college, but I found more people than not, at least those that
communicated with me, who became supportive in a very short period of time," she
continued. "And I don't think it would take something like an Olympic
medal in order to convince them. I think most people can recognize when
someone is doing something they love, and they tend to fall behind it."
Miranda had to convince her father once. He even threatened to sue her
high school in order to keep her from being part of the team, but she
managed to strike a deal that allowed her to keep wrestling as long as she
maintained a fine academic record.
More than a decade later, she has graduated Phi Beta Kappa from
Stanford, one of the most prestigious universities in the United States, and will
start law school at Yale, another school that requires no introduction,
next week after deferring for two years to pursue her wrestling career.
For other medalists on Monday, the path to Athens did not necessarily
require hard bargains or resistance from loved ones. Anna Gomis, a
30-year-old from France who won the bronze medal in the 55-kilogram
class, started wrestling at 13 because it was offered at her local club.
"My parents were never against it," she said. "I found out a long time
later, but my father had been a wrestler, Senegalese style."
Yoshida's family also had a wrestling background. "I began when I was
three," she said, after beating Tonya Verbeek of Canada to win the
55-kilogram division. "I was wrestling before I knew it. It's not that
I became interested in wrestling at a certain point in time. My father
was a wrestler; my brother was a wrestler. It was a natural thing for me to
be a wrestler, too."
If there was a surprise on Monday, it was that these women were not
just happy to be here. There were a few odes to the new era and the
opportunities it presents, the most thoughtful from the articulate Miranda. But the
overriding feeling was not of celebration. It was of competition.
After Icho's older sister Chiharu ended up with silver after losing to
Merleni in overtime on a tiebreaker, she expressed nothing but
disappointment and self-criticism at her own "lack of courage."
"My emotions are so full of regret that I have no time to think about
what the influence of being in the Olympics will have on my sport or my
sport back in Japan," she said.
When the favorite for gold in the 72-kilogram class, Kyko Hamaguchi,
was upset by Wang, the Chinese teenager, in the semifinals, her father, a
former professional wrestler named "Animal" Hamaguchi, had to be restrained by
security guards after he tried to leap from the stands to protest the
decision.
No, this was really and truly about the medals, and for further
evidence, examine the look of despair on the American Sara McMann's face on the
podium after she had been beaten in the closing seconds of her final against
Kaori Icho. McMann was in tears, and she was still fighting them with little
success half an hour later when she walked into a news conference with
her silver medal around her neck.
"I just feel like I did everything I could and worked as hard as I
could, and it just wasn't good enough," she said.
That might be soothing to some. What's to regret if you give it all and
still lose? But not for McMann on Monday.
"I don't think there's anything more painful in the world," she said.
Give her a few more hours, a few more days, and she will surely
reconsider that. McMann began to wrestle at an early age by rough-housing with her
older brother Jason. He was her role model, and he ended up being
murdered in 1999 at the age of 21. "Time eased the pain of that," McMann said.
"It only comforts me that my brother would be proud of me either way."
There was a lot of pride on display on Monday: a lot of pain, a lot of
joy. It is that way nearly every night at the Olympics, and in the end, that
was all these women were asking for: a chance to play out their hopes and
dreams and long-range investment to their conclusion, just like every other
committed athlete.
Who cares if they had black eyes and cuts on their noses when the
conclusion finally came? If it doesn't bother them, it certainly shouldn't bother us.
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Women grapple with cultural shift
David Hopps sees a pigtailed wrestler throw the traditionalists
Tuesday August 24, 2004
The Guardian
The first woman ever to win gold in Olympic wrestling screamed with delight, subsided into floods of tears and leapt into the arms of an astonished referee. Five minutes later she was still sobbing and tearing at her hair on the podium. Irini Merleni could be forgiven her Bridget Jones moment.
Merleni, a Ukrainian with the world's most aggressive pigtails, really did resemble Bridget Jones on a bad-hair day. But what a bad-hair day: she routed the American, Patricia Miranda, in the semis and Japan's Chiharu Icho, the youngest of the fearsome Icho sisters, deservedly followed on a referee's verdict in the final. It was tigerish, it was talented; as an Olympic sport it was entirely legitimate.
One of the more gratifying sounds of a modern Olympics is that of Baron de Coubertin turning in his grave. If he flipped over the introduction of women's weightlifting in Sydney, he will have triple-salchowed in Athens at his first sight of women wrestlers. If boxers are ever admitted, prepare for him to take gold in grave gymnastics.
"The ruggedness of male exertion is much to be dreaded when it comes to the female" - before Merleni plots violent retribution, it is best to point out the quote belonged to Coubertin. As did his suggestion that, when it comes to the Olympics, women should concentrate on exalting the male form by engaging in periodic bouts of polite applause.
As of yesterday they engage instead in strategy, stamina and controlled violence. They are the stars of the Ano Liossia Hall, an Olympic outpost on Athens' scrubby northern fringes.
Not that finding a comment to capture this historic moment was easy. Merleni was too overcome with her gold in the 48kg freestyle to make much sense, and Icho was too concerned about the knock-on effect her defeat might have on her older sister, Kaori, to engage in theorising about the cultural advancement of women.
She observed (although one suspects the translator tidied it up a bit): "I regret I have no thoughts at this time about the effect upon women in Japan by the presence of women's wrestling in the Olympics."
So it fell upon Merleni's masseuse, a friendly, strapping lass, to make a point in broken English that brooked no argument. "Wrestling now for woman. Ukraine women. Ukraine women very beautiful."
Miranda will now study for a law degree at Yale. She does pottery, plays the piano and her parents were political refugees from Brazil. She would be a natural hero in a Pelecanos crime novel. At Stanford University, when she was not fighting men, she was fighting the jibes. "I couldn't count how many people were sceptical about my wrestling."
Japan had three finalists in the four weight categories last night. Kaori Icho did take gold after all at 63kg and there was another for Saori Yoshida at 55kg. Kyoko Hamaguchi, who carried the Japanese flag in the opening ceremony, had to settle for bronze. Between them they symbolise the rise of women's sport in Japan.
Hamaguchi's semi-final loss to the Chinese, Wang Xu, had caused quite a stir. Her father, "Animal" Hamaguchi, a former professional wrestler of renown, leapt from the stands shouting: "That's impossible. It's not on. They've made a mistake." He was restrained by security staff and returned to his seat, to be berated by his wife.
Japan's ancient scripts tell of legendary female warriors and, if the samurai culture put paid to that, those battling qualities live on in the Icho sisters.
Both were wrestling by the age of five and last year they became the first sisters to win world titles in the same year. Chiharu had Kaori in her corner as her coach and, after the bout, dropped to her knees in front of her, partly with exhaustion, partly from homage. Last night, after Kaori won gold, she dropped to her knees in relief.
----------------------------------------------
By Hal HabibPalm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
ATHENS, Greece — You come to the sideshow not knowing what to expect. Women's wrestling is the infant in the Olympic program, a novelty act surely dreamed up by the guys who brought us halfpipe and synchronized diving. You walk in to the arena, mildly surprised when a few minutes pass and no wiseguy has asked where they're hiding the mud.
Thousands came to the Ano Liossia Olympic Hall on Monday to watch the first-ever finals in Olympic women's wrestling.
They did not see a carnival act.
They saw women who had devoted years of their lives for six minutes of combat. In the end, it required zero level of expertise to appreciate precisely what was happening.
A wrestler was so stunned and so out-of-her-mind ecstatic when the referee raised her hand — instantly turning her into an Olympic gold medalist — she leaped into his arms.
Her opponent said she failed "because of my lack of courage."
Another winner performed a tumbling pass.
And yet none was as emotional as Colorado Springs' Sara McMann, who gave up a point with 24 seconds left in her gold-medal match and lost 3-2. Within minutes, her face was awash in red from her bloodshot eyes to the cut on her nose.
"I can't think of anything more painful in the world," she said, after winning her silver medal in the 63-kilogram (138.75-pound) division.
McMann meant that strictly in a sporting sense. Losing in the Olympics hurt, but real tragedy is what she and her family faced in 1999, when her brother, Jason, 21, was murdered.
It was Jason who introduced Sara to the sport, and it was Sara who carried the torch for him after he was hit by a car at age 12. His wrestling career never was the same. Nine years later, he was gone.
"It happened a long time ago," McMann said. "Time has eased the pain. It only comforts me to know my brother would be proud of me either way."
The other American to advance to Monday's competition was Colorado Springs' Patricia Miranda, who takes women's wrestling so seriously she deferred admission to Yale's Law School for two years to be in Athens. She settled for a bronze and the knowledge she was part of the most historic day in her sport's history.
"The demonstration women's wrestling has put on at the Olympic Games is going to do leaps and bounds for the sport," Miranda said. "This was Step 1 toward legitimizing the sport. Every TV set that was turned on, they got to see a match, this great final match between Japan and Ukraine, the double overtime, with the sweat running and the pain on the faces, going down to the last second, nobody knowing who's going to take it. That's what the sport is. That's the tragedy and the triumph that was communicated there."
Miranda got the honor of having won the first Olympic medal in her sport's history, because her third-place bout was the first medal event of the program. There are only four weight classes in women's wrestling, but no matter. Those on the evening program wasted no chances to impress.
Take one of the first lasting scenes, the gold-medal bout in Miranda's 48-kilogram (105.5-pound) division. Ukraine's Irini Merleni and Japan's Chiharu Icho were tied at 2-2 after nine minutes, so the way it works is the referee brings them to the center of the mat, holds each by the wrist, then lifts one woman's arm aloft to reveal the decision by the judges.
The 4-foot-9 Merleni lunged at the stunned referee, who had to be thankful this wasn't a 72-kilogram bout.
"For me, the Olympic Games are something sacred," Merleni said. "The most sacred that can be in an athlete's life."
At one point, Miranda looked to the stands and saw her father, Jose, and wished he could have been sitting next to her late mother, Lia.
"My mom was on my mind only when I looked into my dad's eyes," she said. "I just saw what he was thinking about — being able to share it with her. For him it's not about the wrestling, it's about being able to experience something through his child that he would have loved to share with my mom."
Like so many women competing, Miranda had to fight every step of her career. Girls had the gall to walk into high school gyms? That they did, and next anybody knew, they were on the mat with those boys, holding their own, because no girls' teams existed.
Guess what? The women aren't going anywhere.
"Unless you can really convince me that there's something beyond two arms and two legs, like something you definitely need a penis to do," Miranda said. "Until that becomes a gold-medal sport, I don't think there that there are any."
Just try pushing around McMann, who once had a fear of public speaking, so she did what came natural. She took up theater, surfing and skydiving.
"I'm feisty," McMann said. "When I was younger, I was quite the sweet little girl in skirts and makeup."
But wouldn't she rather have come along after the sport was more established?
"I'd rather be a pioneer," she said. "We've all had our injustice. We've not been wanted around the wrestling room. But I'm not going to let you stop me."
Every ounce of that strength was required when Jason turned up missing for a couple of months before his body was found. As years passed, the family became convinced Lock Haven, Pa., wasn't equipped to crack the case, so her parents moved from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to push it along. The break came in a chance meeting between McMann's father, Thomas, and one of the people behind the TV show America's Most Wanted.
Joe Matthews, a retired Miami Beach police sergeant on the show, pursued the case, leading to the arrest of two men who had a running dispute with Jason, Sara said.
"That broke all of our hearts," she said of his death. "It was probably three years before I could come to terms with everything. My brother meant everything to me.''
These are the women who saw their sport legitimized the past two days. If they were thrilled, if they were crushed, maybe they had a right to be.
"Wrestling's a lot like life," U.S. women's coach Terry Steiner. "It's a roller coaster a lot of times. There are good times. There are bad times. Sometimes you don't know what to feel. I'm sure right now it hurts. I'm sure five years from now you're going to be happy you have a medal hanging on your mantel.
"We need to move women's wrestling forward in this country. We need to change attitudes. Hopefully this will help that, because there's no doubt women do belong on the wrestling mat and there is a place for them."
That place is at the Olympic Games, now.
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U.S. women barely get off mat
Not happy with two medals - silver, bronze
By STEVE AHILLEN, ahillen@knews.com
August 24, 2004
ATHENS, Greece - Women's wrestling in America had a painful birth
Monday night.
Sarah McMann, wrestling for the first U.S. gold medal in women's
wrestling history, fell just short, losing to Kaori Icho of Japan 3-2 for the 63
kg title.
"I don't think there is anything more painful in the world," McMann
said through tears, after losing a 2-0 lead then suffering a decisive
takedown in the last 22 seconds.
The loss earned McMann a silver to go with the bronze Patricia Miranda
won earlier in the night in the 48 kg class. Two medals - taken in the
first Olympics at which the sport was included - might have been good, but
U.S. coach Terry Steiner said the team was hoping for more.
"Naturally everyone is a little disappointed right now," Steiner said,
"but I told the girls to hold their heads high. We have nothing to be
ashamed of."
For McMann, the gold was close. She came on to the mat so focused that
she stood at the start position and waited like a tiger ready to pounce as
archrival Icho took her place.
Neither wrestler could find an opening early but McMann was able to
land two takedowns and put Icho on the defensive through the first period. The
first nearly resulted in an exposure that would have given her two points
instead of one. Officials reviewed the move for a minute to determine whether
Icho's back had been exposed at an angle on the mat as the rules require. The
point was not awarded - a decision that proved decisive later
In the second period, the situation was nearly reversed. Icho, perhaps
remembering the advice given to her by her wrestling sister, Chiharu,
before the match, came on.
"She told me to have courage and attack," said Icho, whose sister was
nearly despondent after losing her gold medal match in the 48 kg class earlier
in the evening.
Her attack resulted in quick takedowns at 4:01 and 5:00 that sent the
large Japanese crowd roaring. Then came the decisive third shot.
Icho bolted at McMann's leg and got it. McMann worked valiantly on an
escape - trying "to get her hip heist," said Steiner - but Icho kept driving
and gained control.
McMann tried desperately to even the match in the final seconds, but
Icho would have none of it.
"I was just trying to get a takedown," said McMann, of the decisive
move. "I was trying to play through her hands and get at her legs."
Instead, she got grabbed and couldn't get away.
Miranda's match had a happier ending with a victory over France's
Angelique Berthenet. After, Berthenet had mounted a 4-0 lead, Miranda roared back
to win 12-4. Even that victory was bittersweet, after having lost her
chance at a gold medal in the semifinals earlier Monday in a 9-0 loss to Irini
Merleni of the Ukraine.
Despite not getting the gold, Miranda was thinking positively at the
end.
"I'm very excited for my sport," she said. "Adding us to the Olympic
Games was just one big step to legitimizing us."
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McMann grapples with loss
Silver medal no consolation after last-second takedown
By Tony Chamberlain, Globe Staff | August 24, 2004
ATHENS -- Long after the match that earned her a silver medal in the first woman's wrestling tournament in Olympic history, Sara McMann's words were poignantly brief.
"I did everything I could do and it wasn't good enough," she said, the words bringing a new flood of tears down her cheeks. "There is nothing more painful in the world."
Leading her opponent, Kaori Icho, 2-0, halfway through the 63-kilogram gold medal match, McMann gave up points in three successive takedowns to lose the match, 3-2, as a large contingent of Japanese fans roared.
At 2-2 late in the bout, McMann repeatedly tried to fight through Icho's hands and shoot for her legs. But every attempt was frustrated, and at one point, Icho was about to get under McMann and reverse the position to score another clean takedown with seconds left. The earlier 2 points were also won on takedowns.
"I was just trying to fight through to her legs and just couldn't get there," said McMann, a 2003 world silver medalist behind the woman who beat her last night.
The bronze medal went to Lise Legrand of France, who beat Greece's Stravroula Zygouri.
"I did not work on technical advice before the match, it was total competitiveness and moral support," Icho said. But one teammate who gave her help was her sister, Chiharu, who had just won the silver medal in the 48-kilogram class.
Also depressed at missing the gold, Chiharu told her sister: "Have courage and attack."
Chiharu lost the gold to Irini Merleni from the Ukraine in a match that ended up tied and was decided on a judgment call of passivity on Chiharu's part.
"I was fighting for gold," said Chiharu. "I got the silver medal because I had no courage."
But the emotions of the sport came in two flavors. If the silver medalists were depressed at the outcome, when the referee raised Merleni's hand as the gold medal winner, the 4-foot-10-inch 100-pounder shrieked, threw her hands up, then jumped into the referee's arms and wrapped her legs around him.
"I was very emotional," Merlini explained.
The bronze medalist in the 48-kilogram class, Patricia Miranda of the US, said she is proud to be an Olympic medalist, and will cherish the experience as she leaves Athens to attend her first year of law school at Yale. Though people once thought she was weird for wrestling in high school, the 5-foot 105-pounder thinks all Olympic sports -- boxing included -- should include a female version.
Making inroads into wrestling has meant that most participants have wrestled on male-dominated teams. But the first appearance of the sport in these Games should, said Miranda, help the female version develop. "I hope when young girls see us winning Olympic medals that they'll be encouraged to do what we did," she said. "And if our exposure helps them, they'll have some models out there. We didn't."
Miranda said the four-woman team that came to Athens expected to medal, and that the expectations were very high for her and McMann to take the gold. So there is a bitterwsweet aftertaste to the day.
"The fact that two of our people didn't advance on a team of four is painful. We're very closely knit," said the Stanford graduate, who deferred law school for the two-year preparation for the Games. "But it isn't necessarily tied to success. I think Tela [O'Donnell] wrestled proud and so did Tocarra [Montgomery]. We have some things to be proud of about our team."
Much later, McMann said she had had time to reflect on her entire Olympic experience, and said she can take some satisfaction in being a medalist. But she was quick to point out that, "There's a difference between a silver medal in wrestling and other sports. You just get so fixed on the gold that everything else equates with loss. But I know I'm an Olympic medalist."
As a child, McMann was encouraged to wrestle, and was coached by an older brother, Jason, who was murdered five years ago. In part, she said, her pain is the memory of her brother.
"That was a long time ago, but still," she said, "I can take comfort in knowing that my brother would have been proud of me tonight no matter what the outcome was."
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Cheers & tears for N.C. wrestler
McMann wrestles with disappointment of silver finish
SCOTT FOWLER
COMMENTARY 8/24/04
ATHENS, Greece - The saddest silver medal of these Summer Games was awarded to U.S. wrestler Sara McMann on Monday night.
McMann's shoulders trembled on the medal stand. She couldn't stop shaking. Tears streamed onto her warmup suit.
Her eyes were so red it looked like she had cried for weeks. The bridge of her nose was also swollen -- the Japanese wrestler who beat McMann in the gold-medal match had reopened a cut.
McMann was a mess.
"I don't think there's anything more painful in the world," she sobbed in her news conference.
Of course, there is. We all know that. McMann -- who wrestled for four years at Marion's McDowell High and now lives in Colorado -- knows that better than most of us.
But when you lose, it hurts.
When you lose something you have worked much of your life trying to accomplish, it hurts more. Even if you are the second-best in the world and really should be happy for doing something tremendous, that's no consolation.
"After it was over, I just felt like I did everything I could, worked as hard as I could, and it wasn't good enough," McMann said, and then more spasms racked her body.
It was painful to listen to.
You know that sympathetic feeling you get when one of your kids gets hurt? That's what it felt like to hear McMann.
Her pain was only part of a historic day. On Monday, the first Olympic medals in women's wrestling were awarded.
McMann, wrestling in the 138.75 pound-and-under class, actually placed higher than any other U.S. wrestler. She barely lost to Kaori Icho, 3-2, in a match conducted at Ano Liossia Olympic Hall in front of thousands of ardent Japanese fans.
McMann jumped to a 2-0 lead and led for almost the entire match, but lost when Icho scored a one-point takedown with 20 seconds to go. Patricia Miranda also won a bronze medal for the United States.
The women's wrestling venue Monday produced more tears per athlete than any other I have seen at these Olympics. Perhaps it is the brutally physical nature of the sport -- when you come off the mat, there's nothing left but raw emotion.
McMann, 23, is an emotional person anyway, her friends say.
"And there's nothing wrong with crying," said Terry Steiner, the U.S. women's wrestling coach. "She deserves to do that if she wants to."
McMann got into the sport after watching her older brother try it. Jason McMann was the family's first wrestling star. But five years ago, he was killed in Lock Haven, Pa. Police have arrested Fabian D. Smart, a former Lock Haven University player, and charged him with murder. The trial is scheduled to begin next month.
"It only comforts me to know my brother would be proud of me today," Sara McMann said Monday.
No one said anything else for a minute. McMann looked back down, on the verge of tears again. She was about to go outside and see a lot of people who loved her.
But at the moment, she was alone again in her silvery pain.