Note from Danielle: A lot of the stuff in this article is wrong. Although I said that I will be training to try to make the US Olympic team in 2004, I never said that I wanted to be the first US Women's Olympic medalist because that is waayyyy out of my reach!!! A lot of other mistakes, but hey, the press is cool!

Take-down with destiny
Cambridge resident aims to be the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in freestyle wrestling

By DAVID ORTIZ 5/17/02
CHRONICLE STAFF

Danielle Hobeika was a wrestler for less than a year before she joined the Harvard wrestling team as an 18-year-old.

Hobeika, who grew up on Irving Street, picked up the sport in 1997, during her senior year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Already captain of the CRLS women’s tennis and swimming teams, Hobeika said she started wrestling to keep herself occupied during the winter months.

A year later, Hobeika was a freshman at hometown Harvard University, working out with heavily recruited athletes on one of the best squads in intercollegiate wrestling.

Oh. Then there’s the fact that Hobeika was a freshman wrestler on the Harvard men’s wrestling team. Harvard doesn’t even have a women’s wrestling team, and Hobeika was only the second woman wrestler in the team’s history to don Crimson skivvies and griplock with the guys.

" It was kind of scary, because I’d only been wrestling for a few months, " said Hobeika, who trained with the men but competed at tournaments against women from other universities. " A lot of times men don’t want to wrestle with the women, but the guys at Harvard were really great. "

Locking shoulders every day in practice with elite male wrestlers obviously gave Hobeika a distinct advantage come tourney time. But that alone doesn’t explain the success she experienced so immediately in the sport.

Wrestling at 101pounds her freshman year, Hobeika typically went up against opponents with five times as much experience and basically threw them all over the mat until they cried " uncle. " Within months she was placing in nearly every tournament in which she competed. At the end of that year, Hobeika wrestled her way to fourth place in the first U.S. National Women’s Freestyle Wrestling tournament ever staged.

Now, four years later, Hobeika is the number-two-ranked woman wrestler in the United States in her weight class, and she’s eyeing the 2004 Olympics. It will be the first Olympics to offer women’s freestyle wrestling as an event. She wants to be the first American woman wrestler in history to win an Olympic medal.

" I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to try, " said Hobeika. She has plans to move to Colorado Springs in 2004 to the U.S. Olympics training center.

Right now, however, she’s got Jenny Wong on her mind. Wong, a Minnesota-born wrestler and a student at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania, is the best women’s wrestler in the nation in the 112-pound weight class, where Hobeika now wrestles. As such, Wong is the only American woman who stands in the way of Hobeika’s path to Olympic glory.

The two women squared off on April 27 in the finals of the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, held in Las Vegas. Wong won the match 9-4, garnering top honors in the most prestigious women’s wrestling event in the nation.

" She’s aggressive, with strong arms. She’s good at throwing. And she’s got an amazing gut-wrench, " Hobeika said of her nemesis, describing a move in which a wrestler locks her arms around the waist of her rival and corkscrews the opponent on the mat to expose her back.

One week after her loss to Wong in Las Vegas, last week Hobeika won the Women’s Wrestling University-Age Nationals, in Chicago. But Hobeika downplayed the victory — " it’s a less important tournament, " she said.

Today, Hobeika is a Web designer at Harvard Divinity School, and temporarily living back with her parents on Irving Street. This summer, she is moving to New Jersey to take a job as a Princeton University researcher in a psychology laboratory. Hobeika said she plans to start the first Ivy League women’s wrestling club at Princeton while she works there.

But first things first — on June 24, Hobeika travels to Saint Paul, Minn., for the U.S. women’s World Team trials. Winners in Saint Paul go on to the World Championship in Greece.

And Hobeika knows she will meet up again with Wong in Saint Paul.

" She’s beaten me pretty badly in the past, but this past weekend I wrestled her a lot tougher than I have in the past, " Hobeika said of Wong. " I’ve learned from my mistakes, and hopefully I’ll have a better shot in the trials. "

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International Olympic Committee launches extensive consultation on the future of the Games; Public comment requested through web page

5/25/2002
IOC/

Members of the Olympic Movement, together with the general public, to make suggestions on controlling the growing cost, size, and complexity of the Games

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (25 May 2002) – Following the establishment earlier this year of the Olympic Games Study Commission by Dr Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a section of the Olympic Movement’s website has been dedicated to gathering ideas aimed at reducing the cost, size and complexity of the Games, while preserving their success.

All constituencies of the Olympic Movement, private and public sports bodies, scholars plus the public at large, are invited to submit their ideas relating to the organisation of the Games by visiting the home page of the Olympic Movement’s website www.olympic.org and completing a questionnaire found by clicking on the icon "Public Suggestions". Recognising that the Olympic Games is a passion for all, the IOC has, for the first time, opened up its research to include the views of the general public.

"Evidence suggests that the costs of staging the Olympic Games have continued to rise and the Games have become increasingly complex to organise. If such costs are not brought under control, there is some risk that the Games may become too big and too complex for all but a few cities or countries to handle", stated Richard W. Pound, Chairman of the Games Study Commission. "We believe that working with Olympic Games experts and consulting with all Olympic constituencies should be complemented by a wide public consultation process. It is with this in mind that we decided to launch "Public Suggestions". Everyone is inspired by the Olympic Games and therefore, they should have an opportunity to make suggestions on the future of the Games. We thank everyone for their participation in this effort."

The Olympic Games Study Commission has been established with a mandate to review all aspects of the organisation of the Olympic Games, with a view to assist host cities and host countries to reduce the expenditures on the occasion of the Olympic Games. The Commission will submit interim recommendations to the extraordinary IOC Session in November of this year in Mexico City, Mexico.

The Olympic Movement’s web site, www.olympic.org was relaunched on 31st January 2002, with a complete overhaul aimed at responding better to the expectations of sports and Olympic Enthusiasts. Content is organized in six main sections: Athletes, Sports, Olympic Games, Passion, News and Organisation.

Editor's note: The actual link to the suggestion area on the IOC web page is
http://www.suggestions.olympic.org/question-intro.aspx?LN=EN

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