News Page

'This is Saskatoon's next great athlete'
Viola Yanik, 21, going far and fast in wrestling; third in world

Bob Florence The StarPhoenix

Friday, October 03, 2003

That's the thing about Viola Yanik. She makes the final four in her debut at the world wrestling championships, wins the bronze, and while everybody else sees this coming, she doesn't. It floors her.

Just because her coach Todd Hinds has been calling her "The Real Deal" from the start -- "From Day 1, from the first time I saw her" -- and just because Dave Elder, her coach back in high school, has been predicting a medal at worlds for Yanik since she was 16 -- this goes five years back -- just because her talent sticks out like Pippi Longstocking's pigtails, doesn't mean she sees it.

All she sees is a wrestler who needs more balance on her legs, better groundwork on the mat, who has a lot to learn.

She sees spit, others see the polish.

She dusted off four opponents at worlds; brushed them away like powder from a sugar doughnut. Yet the bout she dwells on for days afterward is her semi-final against Sarah McMann of the United States; the one match of Yanik's five at Madison Square Garden which she lost.

She watches videotape of that match and sometimes she watches with her hands over her eyes, peeking between her fingers like she is watching a fright scene in a horror movie, turning her head away when she sees her mistakes.

"Losing weighs heavily on her," Hinds says. " 'I don't get it,' she'll say. 'I don't understand what went wrong here.'

"Losing hurts, but the thing I try to impress on her is it's not always a bad thing. There are learning experiences in every match, both wins and losses."

She ranks in the top three on the planet in the 63-kilogram class, is Canada's best finisher at worlds in women's and men's divisions both, and does that register with her? Think she realizes how knockout-good she is?

"This is Saskatoon's next great athlete," says Elder, a friend of Saskatoon's last great athlete, Olympic gold medallist speed skater Catriona Le May Doan.

Elder coached both Le May Doan and Yanik at Holy Cross High School. He says Viola -- the one he calls simply 'V' -- has the same special qualities Catriona has: "The focus, the mind-set, the determination.

"In high school, V kept a diary of notes of every mistake she made in a match."

Mistakes? What mistakes? Yanik didn't have a point scored against her through the Grade 11 and 12 wrestling seasons. Even in perfection, she looks for the flaws.

"I'm a competitive person," Yanik says.

We've noticed. So has the wrestling world.

Leading into the world championships earlier this month a preview appeared on the event's website. "Yanik," it read, "has the heart of a lion."

And she has muscle-braided thighs -- with her low centre of gravity, it's like trying to tip over a Humvee -- and she has double-wide shoulders and you roll it all together and it's a powerful package.

If only she could see it.

If only she saw herself the way others see her.

"I doubt myself a lot," she says. "It's my biggest weakness."

Before a match she can be a bundle of frayed nerve ends. But get her on the mat and watch her go. Wham. Bam. Hot damn.

"She's very quick, explosive," Hinds says. "Technically, she is very good.

"How do you beat her? Good luck. You can't."

A few people can, but it's a short list.

At 21, she has just cracked the seal on her international career. Top three in the world already and she has only begun.

The Olympic trials are in December in Edmonton. The winner of an elimination series meets Yanik in a best-of-three final to decide Canada's representative in the 63-kg division for the Athens Summer Games.

Until then, she'll do distance running, she'll train with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies in the combat room at the Education Building, she'll spar with coach Hinds, she'll lift weights, she'll put in her 12-hour shifts as a constable with the Saskatoon Police, working in the detention centre. She'll keep on doing the things which have brought her this far, this fast.

For motivation, she can replay her semi-final bout from worlds.

For validation, all she has to do is look in the mirror.

Look at her, Viola.

See?

She has champion written all over her.