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Women hone skills for debut in Olympics
Training pays off at wrestling tournament

By MERI-JO BORZILLERI THE GAZETTE

NEW YORK When schoolgirl Jenny Wong told her mom she wanted to take up wrestling, her mom was confused. “You mean mud wrestling?” she asked. No, Wong said. Wrestling on a mat. After years of wrestling with boys and in college programs, the petite Wong, a former football cheerleader, took a major step. She moved from her home in Minnesota to Colorado Springs when USA Wrestling began the first women’s resident program for the nation’s top women wrestlers last year.
“That was the best decision I could have made,” said Wong, 5-foot-1, who wrestles at 112.25 pounds and won a bronze medal Sunday at the 2003 World Freestyle Wrestling Championships at Madison Square Garden. “I love cheerleading, but it doesn’t give you the rush this does.”
U.S. coach Terry Steiner leads a group of about 20 women who live and train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. Women’s wrestling will make its Olympic debut in the 2004 Summer Games, Aug. 13-29, in Athens.
Rulon Gardner, who won a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling and was one of the stars of the 2000 Summer Olympics, came out of USA Wrestling’s resident program for male wrestlers. Gardner lives in Cascade.
With the goal of winning gold medals, the wrestlers train two or three times a day, eat at a cafeteria on campus, live in apartment-like suites and rub shoulders with athletes in other sports.
Some go to nearby colleges. Wong attends the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Others have parttime jobs in the city. World champion gold medalist Kristie Marano has a job at USA Wrestling.
All seven women, six of whom are residents, that competed at the world championships won medals Sunday — one gold, four silver and two bronze.
The program gives wrestlers top-notch coaching and training facilities, but it also brings the nation’s top wrestlers together. As a team, they’re in the world’s elite, as the weekend’s competition showed.
“The difference is monumental,” said Sally Roberts, who won bronze. “We push each other, drive each other to drive ourselves to be the best we can be.” While the team showed depth, the world championships also showed the team has further to go. Five wrestlers reached the finals. Only one captured a gold medal. Those five wrestlers have combined for 11 world silver medals since 1996. Having something to overcome provides more inspiration for the Olympics.
“Having lost, I think it’s really hard to re-create this kind of pain,” silver medalist Patricia Miranda said through tears after her final match.
“This kind of pain, if you can store it up, is the kind of pain that fuels you through the hard parts of training.”
Tina George, who like Miranda dominated early before losing in the final, agreed.
“Next year we should be untouchable,” George said. “That’s our goal. Sometimes it takes longer than you expected it to.”
The tournament gave tremendous exposure to women’s wrestling. Women wrestled side-by-side with men in front of the largest audiences they’ve seen. The three-day event drew an announced crowd of 53,665 at Madison Square Garden, a record for anon-Olympic international wrestling event in the United States. For some fans, it was an education. “I think they saw there was this wrestling thing that didn’t include broken chairs and oil,” Miranda said. “And they were taken by it. It was a big step for women.”

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2003 Japan World Champions

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