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Wrestling: Olympic medalists to form women's World Cup team
Kyodo 9/9/04
All four Japanese Olympic medal winners in women's wrestling will likely unite for the World Cup team competition in Tokyo next month, Japan Wrestling Federation President Tomiaki Fukuda said Thursday.
Fukuda said the federation plans to field a team of Saori Yoshida, who won the 55-kilogram gold medal in Athens, 63-kg champion Kaori Icho, 48-kg silver medalist Chiharu Icho and 72-kg bronze winner Kyoko Hamaguchi for the Oct. 8-9 event at Komazawa Gymnasium.
Defending champion the United States and China are expected to be the chief rivals for the Japanese team.
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By MERI-JO BORZILLERI - THE GAZETTE 9/9/04
ATHENS, Greece - They put a silver medal around Sara McMann’s neck at the Olympics, and all she could do was cry.
She grimaced on the podium’s second step, trying to keep the tears from flowing. She cried during the Japanese anthem, played for champion Kaori Icho, the training partner who had beaten her when it counted. She wept later, during the press conference.
Women wrestlers, including Colorado Springs residents McMann and Patricia Miranda, won medals for the first time in Olympic history Monday.
“This is step one to legitimizing us as a sport,” said Miranda, who won the sport’s first medal, a bronze, when she beat France’s Angelique Berthenet, 12-4, in the 48-kilogram (105.5-pound) class at Ano Liossia Olympic Hall.
Miranda, who will enroll in law school at Yale soon after the Games, was defeated 9-0 in the semifinals earlier in the day by eventual champion Irini Merlini of the Ukraine, the world champion.
But wrestling history was lost on McMann, and the gold medal, too. McMann led Icho in the 63-kilogram (138.5 pounds) championship match, 2-1, with fewer than two minutes left before Icho tied it up and went ahead in the match’s final minute. It ended at 3-2 with McMann futilely lunging for Icho’s legs in an attempt to pull her down.
“I don’t think there’s anything more painful in the world,” said McMann, 23, her face puffy and voice quavering. “After it was over, I just felt like I did everything I could, worked as hard as I could. It just wasn’t good enough.”
McMann defeated Greece’s Stavroula Zygouri by pin just 50 seconds into their semifinal match Monday. She felt ready for Icho, whom she had lost to in overtime at the world championships in September. But it happened again — another narrow loss on the biggest stage in her sport.
Terry Steiner is coach of the women’s wrestling program at the U.S. Olympic Training Center where Mc-Mann and Miranda live. He knows McMann will feel differently someday about the color of her medal.
“I’m sure she’ll realize it’s an outstanding accomplishment in time,” he said.
McMann knows the healing power of time.
It’s been five years since McMann’s older brother, Jason, was murdered while a student at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania.
The investigation took three years. Helped by a tip in the TV show “America’s Most Wanted,” a former Lock Haven football player was arrested and is scheduled to go on trial next month for the murder, which authorities think was drug-related.
McMann almost quit the sport then, said her boyfriend, former Arizona State wrestler Steven Blackford.
“It was a turning point,” he said Monday from the stands with McMann’s family. “She’s got a strong sense of resolve.”
But McMann’s tears Monday were not for her brother, who had converted his sister, a former cheerleader, to a wrestler in ninth grade.
“That happened a long time ago,” McMann said of the tragedy.
“Time eased the pain of that. It only comforts me to know that my brother would be proud of me either way.”
The tears were for something she worked for, poured her heart into, and didn’t get.
“This is what she has wanted since 11th grade,” said her father, Tucker.
Now it’s history.
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