Being on her back is an unfamilar position for Canadian Christine Nordhagen-Vierling, who is expected to medal in the 160 pound division, the heaviest of classes on the female side.
News Page
U.S. Women Wrestlers to Make Debut
ALAN ROBINSON
Associated Press 8/21/04
ATHENS, Greece - For years, women fought for the right to wrestle in the United States, sometimes unsuccessfully and almost always with little support from anyone but their families.
They went to court to be allowed onto boys' teams. They ignored the taunts and teasing of parents who didn't want them to compete against their sons. Even when they gained admission to the mat, they nearly always lost to the boys, often by overwhelming scores.
Still, they persevered, despite absorbing daily beatings in the wrestling room and hearing unflattering remarks in the locker room. They gamely competed in the few competitions open just for them or migrated to the half-dozen U.S. colleges who sponsored their sport.
Now comes the reward for their patience, persistence, bumps and bruises, and damaged egos.
Finally, they are Olympians.
Now that they have a chance to win a medal, the four-member U.S. team - Patricia Miranda, Sara McMann and Toccara Montgomery, Tela O'Donnell - said just being an Olympian isn't good enough.
"We're moving this sport forward," U.S. coach Terry Steiner said.
Tricia Saunders, another U.S. coach and probably the best female wrestler in U.S. history, can remember hoping in 1989 that the sport would gain Olympic status.
"I thought 1992, 1996, but it didn't happen," said Saunders, whose own career was interrupted for years because she couldn't find competitions to enter.
Fittingly, since this is the first Olympics with women's wrestling, the women are first up with qualifying and pool matches Sunday before the medal matches are wrestled Monday.
After that, it's Rulon's turn - American super heavyweight Rulon Gardner, bad luck and all, goes for a second Olympic gold following four adventuresome years since he upset supposedly unbeatable Russian three-time champion Alexander Karelin in Sydney.
The seven Greco-Roman weight classes will be competed over three days Tuesday through Thursday at the Ano Liossia wrestling hall in suburban Athens. After that, a talented but exceptionally inexperienced U.S. freestyle team wrestles over the final three days of the games.
The U.S. women have been competitive against the field, and all talked of wanting to perform well to accelerate the sport's advancement in the United States.
"We have a long way to go to gain respect, and this is how it starts," Miranda said. "This is our stage to say, `Hey, look at us.'"
Miranda, a Stanford grad who put off Yale Law School for two years to pursue the Olympics, was a one-point loser to three-time world champion Irina Melnik of Ukraine in last year's 105 1/2 pounds (48kg) world finals.
Japan has won the last four world titles at 121 pounds (55kg), with Saori Yoshida winning the last two. Yoshida beat George 5-2 in the world finals.
At 138 1/2 pounds (63kg), McMann has beaten two-time world champion Kaori Icho of Japan, but Icho beat her 4-3 in overtime in the world finals. Icho's sister, Chiharu, also is among the favorites at 105 1/2 pounds.
Montgomery beat world champion Kyoko Hamaguchi in Tokyo a month after Hamaguchi beat her in the September world finals, but Hamaguchi bounced back to win in a test tournament at the Athens Olympic venue.
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Feelings of Family Motivate a Groundbreaking U.S. Team
By DAMON HACK
Published: August 22, 2004
ATHENS, At age 3, Sara McMann was pulled into the unknown world of wrestling, following her older brother, Jason, in the way that younger siblings do. When Jason tried a move, she mimicked it with her tiny arms. When Jason bumped her, she bumped back.
"I was his wrestling dummy," she said.
They spent their formative years roughhousing. But then, in January 1999, Jason disappeared near Lock Haven, Pa. According to the police, he had been in a bar fight and was beaten unconscious. Three months later, the police found his body in a wooded area of Logan Township. Jason was 21.
His death nearly broke McMann. Today, as a member of the first United States Olympic women's wrestling team, she says it guides her every step.
"I totally worshipped him," said McMann, 23, who was three years younger than Jason. "I know that no matter how I do here, he would love me."
The story is one McMann has shared with others, including the teammates she has grown so close to that they treat one another like sisters. In the years leading to the Athens Games, there have been pajama parties and giggling fits and countless hours lifting weights.
They have shed tears and pounds, chiseling their bodies in search of a more perfect wrestling machine.
As the first American women's wrestlers to be called Olympians, they are bound by the shared experiences of overcoming sexism, sadness and the rigors of the sport itself. McMann, who competes in the 63-kilogram (138.75-pound) division, along with Tela O'Donnell (55 kilogram/121 pounds), Toccara Montgomery (72 kilograms/158.5 pounds) and Patricia Miranda (48 kilograms/105.5 pounds), were to begin competition Sunday at Olympic Hall in Ano Liossia, a suburb just northwest of Athens.
"It has made us closer," McMann said while standing in the main press center here. "Patricia and I watch each other's matches to motivate ourselves. Tela is probably my most consistent workout partner. Toccara and I have gone to camps together. If someone is having a problem, the other person is always there to say, 'Hey, what's going on?' "
On such a small team, the ties that bind are durable. The four have crossed barriers in their lives and on the mat. Boys and, later, men have taunted them, threatened them and, occasionally, tried to injure them.
O'Donnell, 22, who was reared by her mother in Homer, Alaska, played boys' junior varsity football. Miranda, 25, whose mother died of an aneurysm when she was 10, defied her father's wishes that she not wrestle.
He threatened to sue her high school to keep her off the team until Miranda and her father, Jose, made a deal that she could wrestle if she kept good grades. Miranda graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford with degrees in economics and international policy; she will begin Yale Law School in the fall.
"When I started wrestling in the eighth grade, I was ready to have something challenge me," Miranda said. "It scared me so much the first day because I knew it would take all of my body and all of my mind, and that excited me. It's one on one. If you win it, you own it, and you own it for the rest of your life."
Miranda said she saw Athens as an opportunity to dispel the myths that have slowed the acceptance of women's wrestling. "It's our stage to say, 'Hey, look at us,' " she said. " 'See us not as a side joke or as mud wrestling. See the sweat and the tears and the triumph.' "
Townsend Saunders, one of the team's coaches and a silver medalist in freestyle wrestling at the 1996 Atlanta Games, said of the women: "I equate it to Jackie Robinson. There was a time when people were upset that black athletes were competing. We have a chance to open up some eyes to this sport, and I think when you see some medals wrapped around some necks, it will give a lot more opportunities to other girls."
Montgomery, 21, who is majoring in education at Cumberland College in Kentucky, has risen to the peak of her sport while her father, Paul, has followed her career from behind prison walls in southwestern Ohio, where he is serving 30 years to life for a double murder in 1998. Montgomery was 15 at the time.
Four days before leaving for Athens, she said, she spoke to her father on the telephone; she has been unable to visit him this year.
"I was always a Daddy's girl, and I'm still a Daddy's girl," Montgomery said. "He's always been positive, telling me not to take any pressure here. Sometimes he says, 'You still can't beat me,' and I'm like, 'O.K., old man.' "
Montgomery says her father remains a beacon in her life. She says that even without him, she has not made it here alone.
The sentiment is shared by McMann, who still reflects on her early matches with Jason, when a child's endeavor became an adult's calling.
"I live my life," she said, "to make him proud of the woman that I am."
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Women's wrestling ready for premiere
ATHENS, August 21 -
The draw for the four Women's Wrestling categories held at Ano Liossia Olympic Hall today should result in some fascinating bouts between the world's leading competitors.
The Wrestling tournament opens tomorrow with the Women's Freestyle 48kg category at 09:30.
The competition format for Wrestling system starts off with four pools in which the competitors fight each other. The winners of the pools move on into the semifinals.
Usually there are seven weight categories, but in the Olympic Games there are only four. This results in tough fights between athletes who normally would not meet as they compete in different categories.
In the 48kg Women's class the draw puts two world champions in one pool. Chiharu ICHO (JPN) is the reigning 51kg world champion and Brigitte WAGNER (GER) was 48kg world champion in 2002. They will meet in the second round of the pool elimination series.
Reigning world champion in the 55kg class, Saori YOSHIDA (JPN), ended up in the same pool as runner up in the 62kg class at the 2001 World Championships, Diletta GIAMPICCOLA (ITA).
Two 2002 World Championship bronze medallists of two different weight classes will meet in pool number two of the 55kg category: Ida-Theres KARLSSON (SWE) who won her medal in the category 55kg, and Mabel FONSECA (PUR) 59kg.
An eye should be kept on the international rookie Tela O'DONNELL (USA), who competes in Athens after defeating fellow American Tina GEORGE, a two times silver medallist in World Championships, for a spot in the USA Olympic squad.
The 63kg category will be another tough one as it involves medallists from three different categories. Kaori ICHO, Japan's reigning world champion, is one of the medal contenders, but she will have to upset Alena KARTASHOVA (RUS) in her pool if she wants the title.
In pool 2 close contests can be expected between MENG Lili (CHN), 2001 world champion, and Sara McMANN (USA), runner up in last year's World Championships.
The first round in pool number four in the 72kg class will be a replay of the final match of last year's World Championships. Kyoko HAMAGUCHI, who was Japan's flagbearer in the Opening Ceremony, will meet Toccara MONTGOMERY (USA). HAMAGUCHI was the winner last year.
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Athens 2004-Grappling for status
Saturday August 21 2004 09:40:25 AM BDT
Feisty females intent on dispelling the notion that women's wrestling is just a sexy sideshow to the main Olympic event make their Games debut on Sunday.
Women wrestlers are eager to show the sporting world that they are not 'toothless ogres' or busty Baywatch lookalikes.
Four medals will be up for grabs in the first Olympics for women grapplers but it is acceptance and an end to racy jokes that top the competitors' wish list.
"When you tell guys that you wrestle they expect you to be bigger, with just two-teeth, an ogre with a hunchback," said American Sara McMann, a silver medallist at the 2003 World Championships. "We can help change that."
Patricia Miranda, who delayed entry to Yale Law School for a year to prepare for the Athens Games, added that the Olympics was an opportunity to silence the doubters and inspire a new generation of women wrestlers.
"This is our stage - we can show that women's wrestling is not a side joke or something that makes people think about mud wrestling," she said.
"They will see our sweat, tears and triumphs and that it is as intense as any male sport.
"If men think it is sexy to watch girls wrestling, fine. I do not hold that against them. We realise there is a long way to go, even within the sport, for us to gain respect."
Women's wrestling is a popular TV sport in Japan and the country has won 41 world titles in 16 years.
Four Japanese world champions are ready to rumble on the Athens mats to add to the golds collected in swimming and judo.
Five-time world heavyweight champion Kyoko Hamaguchi is hoping that the curse which has hit flag carriers in Athens does not strike again.
The 26-year-old led the Japanese team into the Olympic Stadium last Friday the 13th, a date which proved unlucky for fellow flag bearers Roger Federer of Switzerland and Thailand's Paradorn Srichapan who both bowed out of the tennis in the early rounds.
"My father has taught me that something good awaits you if you keep on trying hard," said Hamaguchi, who ruled the world from 1997 to 1999 until a two-year slump before coming back to reclaim the title in the past two years.
Chiharu Icho, 22, and her sister Kaori, two years her junior, are booked in the 51kg and 63kg contests.
The sisters started dabbling in the sport when their big brother Toshiyuki joined a local children's wrestling club in Hachinohe in the rural north of Honshu Island. Chiharu was only five and Kaori was a toddler.
Saori Yoshida, whose father Hidekatsu was the 1973 national champion in the freestyle 57kg, is raring to add the 55kg Olympic title to her two consecutive world gold medals.
The star attraction in men's wrestling will be Rulon Gardner.
Dubbed 'miracle man' after cheating the odds in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and death on a frozen mountainside two years ago, he is back for more gold with a new wife on his arm and backed by a vocal cheer squad.
Gardner pulled off the "Miracle on the Mat" in Sydney by stripping the cloak of invincibility from the shoulders of Russia's Alexander Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling's super-heavyweight division.
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Women's wrestling is new sport on block
Debut of only 2004 novice sport, Rulon Gardner
in Greco-Roman are biggest draws on the mat
8/21/04
|
Being on her back is an unfamilar position for Canadian Christine Nordhagen-Vierling, who is expected to medal in the 160 pound division, the heaviest of classes on the female side. |
ATHENS, Greece - Women wrestlers make their Olympic debut on Sunday in the only sport to be added to the Games program for the 2004 edition in Athens.
Canadians are favorites for medals, led by Christine Nordhagen-Vierling at nearly 160 pounds, the heaviest of the four classes, and Lindsay Belisle among the 106-lbs. lightweights.
South Korea’s Lee Na-lae is favorite in the 121-lbs. weightclass and China’s Meng Lili in the 139 pound class.
Each country is allowed only one competitor in each class with 21 countries involved in two days of freestyle action culminating in medals on Monday.
The Greco-Roman competition, a discipline not open to the women, opens on Tuesday with superheavyweight champion Rulon Gardner sure to be a draw at the 9,000-seat Ano Liossia Olympic Hall, four years after the American stunned the long unbeaten Russian Alexander Karelin to take his title.
Now competing minus a toe lost to frostbite after a snowmobile accident that nearly cost him his life, Gardner says his brush with death has brought him back stronger than ever.
The three days of Greco-Roman bouts risk being disturbed by the same Middle Eastern political troubles that affected last week’s judo in the same venue, when Iran apparently told its world champion to pull out rather than face an Israeli.
An Israeli-Iranian bout could be thrown up in Monday’s draw.
The men’s freestyle discipline, where holds below the waist and trips are allowed, begins its three days of competition on Friday.
Both men’s disciplines have seen the number of weight classes cut to seven from eight at this Olympics in order to accommodate the women’s event.
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Beauty, eh?
Canada's female wrestlers more than just pretty faces
By ERIC FRANCIS, Calgary Sun 8/21/04
ATHENS -- To some, the thought of women's wrestling conjures up images of Amazonian types. To others, the mental picture revolves around rotund Russians and Romanians.
Truth is, those who tune in to watch the Olympic debut of the sport tomorrow will be pleasantly surprised on many levels.
"First of all, looks have nothing to do with sport," said Calgary's Christine Nordhagen-Vierling, a six-time world and 10-time national champ.
"But our Canadian girls team is really cute. People don't know them because they're not in the media a lot but our 48 kilo wrestler, Lyndsay Belisle, looks like Cameron Diaz. She could be a model. And the other two, Tonya Verbeek and Viola Yanik, are really good-looking girls, too. But they're wrestlers."
Wait a second. Cameron Diaz?
"A few guys have said that," said the beautiful Belisle sheepishly, suggesting she was uncomfortable with the comparison.
"No, actually I kinda like it."
Starting tomorrow, 48 women from 21 countries will compete in four weight categories to determine the world's first Olympic queens of the mat. While all four Canadians have legitimate shots at winning their round-robin to move on to Monday's semifinals, the team's biggest medal hopeful is Nordhagen-Vierling.
"They always think I should be a lot bigger," said the 5-ft. 7-in., 158-lb. Nordhagen-Vierling when asked how people react when told she's an amateur wrestler.
"Because they see pro wrestling, they think you have to be 7 ft. tall -- they want to know my wrestling name, what my costume looks like. They don't understand I'm the biggest you can be. If you're heavier than me, you can't wrestle."
Nordhagen-Vierling anchors the team in the 72-kg category, while the tiny mite of the squad is 4-ft. 11-in., 105-lb. Belisle of Burnaby, B.C.
"People who watch are going to see very athletic, fit, strong women who know the sport," said Belisle, 26, a 2003 Pan-Am Games silver medallist.
"It's different than men's wrestling because there are some moves we tend to do more of," added Verbeek.
"But I still think it's action-packed. I think it's going to leave an impression with people because they don't watch freestyle (amateur) wrestling that often so it gives us a chance to show it off."
Training in nearby Thessaloniki alongside Daniel Igali and Guivi Sissaouri the last week, the women's team is used to fighting among boys, as most first plied their trade by scrapping their big or little brother.
"My brother and I used to have some doozies that lasted like a half hour," said Nordhagen-Vierling, who is coached by husband Leigh Vierling, a former national-team grappler.
Now she'll take out her aggression on any one of the 12 opponents in her weight class.
And while Nordhagen-Vierling admits she can get a little dirty at times, she's still every bit as sensitive off the mat as any other woman.
"If I win gold at the Olympics, I would for sure be crying," said the schoolteacher, who postponed hanging up her wrestling boots so she could chase the only title she's never owned. "I've cried at the worlds every single year I've won. I've always bawled. Especially when they raise that flag and the anthem is playing. You feel so proud. It'll be great for my friends and family who've spent so much money to come. I don't want to cry but I'm just not tough enough."
Poor choice of words.
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Montgomery family's best gift would be gold
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Mary Schmitt Boyer
Plain Dealer Reporter
Athens, Greece- The holidays are the hardest for Paul Montgomery.
He remembers the family celebrations and the big meals and how he would buy his daughter everything she wanted for Christmas and then tease her by hiding the presents.
He thinks the best gift he ever got for her was a CD player. He wrapped the empty box and put it under the tree. Then he hid the gift and sent her searching the house.
"When she found it, she acted like she'd won a beauty pageant," he remembered.
And what was the best gift he ever got from his daughter?
"A [championship] medal," he said, without hesitation.
Paul Montgomery is on the phone from the Lebanon (Ohio) Correctional Institution after a jury convicted him in the shooting death of two men in Cleveland in 1998. Montgomery had gone to visit his brother and was approached by two men outside his brother's East 78th Street apartment.
Police said the three men were arguing with others, possibly about a drug deal, before Montgomery started shooting. He is serving 33 years.
His daughter, Toccara Montgomery, is here preparing for the debut of the women's Olympic wrestling competition Sunday.
Although she is the U.S. women's champion at 158.5 pounds and is a contender for the gold medal, she has not won it yet.
But father and daughter are confident.
"I told her she could do anything if she put her heart into it," said Montgomery, who has never seen his daughter wrestle.
"I'm putting my money on me," said the daughter.
The two spoke shortly before she left for Europe. They cannot speak often, but they remain close.
"I was always a daddy's girl," Toccara Montgomery said.
"My dad has been as involved in my life, it's sad to say, as some people who have their dads with them every day. I'm glad to have parents as supportive as mine."
Paul Montgomery says he doted on his daughter, while his wife, Tara, spoiled their son, Patrick, who is nine years younger than Toccara.
"At first, it was like she was my only child," he said. "But even after my son was born, we still stayed close."
When he worked in the cleaning business, scrubbing, waxing and buffing floors in drug stores from Avon to Seven Hills, he would bring home trinkets for his daughter, like the tiny purse on a Velcro strap she could wrap around her wrist.
"They were cheap gifts, but they were new to the neighborhood," he said.
Montgomery supported his daughter in her sporting activities, attending all her basketball and softball games.
"Every sport there is she went out for, and any sport she played she did well," he said. "But she never succeeded like she did in this sport."
Paul Montgomery said he did some wrestling himself in eighth grade, before abandoning it for track and field.
Toccara Montgomery didn't start wrestling until after her father was arrested, but "I don't think it was a driving force to make me go out and try wrestling."
She was a sophomore at East Tech when the new wrestling coach, Kip Flanik, started recruiting girls for his co-ed team. Flanik had just arrived from Cleveland Heights High School, where he had started Tina George on the path to the women's world team.
Toccara Montgomery quickly followed the same path as George, who became her role model and friend.
Just after picking up the sport, she finished second in the national girls high school tournament. By the time she was a senior in 2001, she won that tournament and took the first of her three national titles.
She was the 2001 FILA International Women's Wrestler of the Year and finished second in the world championships in 2001 and 2003.
Flanik is still her coach, and he will be in the stands here, along with her mother.
Her father, who has served seven years and hopes he'll be released in another 10 or 11, will be watching on the small television in his cell. He hasn't seen her in about a year.
"She looks the same," he said. "She's growing up, but she's still my baby. . . . She's . . . a wonderful daughter . . . an Olympian."
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Female wrestling pioneers ready for debut
By Jeff Faraudo, STAFF WRITER 8/21/04
ATHENS, Greece -- The four Americans competing in the first Olympic women's freestyle wrestling tournament want something bigger than gold medals.
They want fans -- and even their fellow athletes -- to view what they do as legitimate.
"There's a long way to go, even within our own sport, to gain respect. This is how it starts," said Stanford graduate Patricia Miranda, who begins competition in the 105-pound class Sunday. "We want people to look at us as more than a joke. To see more than mud wrestling. To see this as a legitimate sport.
"We want it to be something where people might turn on the TV for more than two minutes, and see the pain and the joy we see in every sport."
Getting past the snickers and into at least the Olympic mainstream has been a long, tough road for women's wrestling.
Tela O'Donnell, a 121-pounder from Homer, Alaska, recalled that after being barred from competing in junior high school, she addressed the local school board and wrote letters. Eventually, she was allowed to wrestle in practice but never in competition.
Sara McMann, a 139-pounder from Marion, N.C., began wrestling at age 6, following in the steps of her older brother. But there was a price tag.
"I kind of worshiped him, tried to imitate what he was doing," she said. "Not to mention, I was his wrestling dummy, whether I liked it or not."
Even after she became a national-caliber wrestler, McMann had to fight archiac stereotypes.
"People would say, 'Oh, you're a wrestler?' I guess they anticipated I would be bigger, with only two teeth ... an ogre or something," she said.
It was no easier for Toccara Montgomery, a 158-pounder from Cleveland.
"Growing up in Ohio, a strong wrestling state, it was pretty tough," she said. "Coaches were really reluctant to let their guys wrestle me. It's all changing now."
And it can change dramatically this week, as their sport gains worldwide attention at the Olympics through television. The women understand their responsibility, and their opportunity.
"We all understand this is the first time we're on such a world stage," McMann said. "We have to represent wrestling really well."
Assistant coach Townsend Saunders called the women pioneers, comparing them to Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color line nearly 60 years ago.
Head coach Terry Steiner knows the sport won't gain widespread acceptance overnight.
"There's a lot of attitudes to change. That's going to take time," he said. "These girls have gotten to where they are in spite of the opportunity they've had, not because of them. People haven't given them much."
In Athens, none of the four will wait for a handout. All of them are regarded as threats to win medals.
Miranda, the 25-year-old Saratoga native who begins Yale law school just days after the Olympics close, was motivated all year by a defeat in last fall's World Championships.
"Losing in the finals really helped me focus on redemption," she said. "I've only got one dream, one shot."
Thanks to these four, the dreams will get the chance to flourish.
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48 kg/105.5 lbs.
Pool 1
Chiharu Icho (Japan)
Lyndsay Belisle (Canada)
Brigitte Wagner (Germany)
Pool 2
Angelique Berthenet (France)
Enkhjargal Tsogtbazar (Mongolia)
Leoplodina Ross Davyes (Guinea-Bissau)
Pool 3
Fani Psatha (Greece)
Fahila Louati (Tunisia)
Lidia Karamchakova (Tajikistan)
Irini Merlini (Ukraine)
Pool 4
Patricia Miranda (United States)
Li Hui (China)
Larisa Oorzhak (Russia)
Caripa Mayelis (Venezuela)
55 kg/121 lbs.
Pool 1
Tela O’Donnell (United States)
Olga Smirnova (Russia)
Tonya Verbeek (Canada)
Pool 2
Tatiana Lazareva (Ukraine)
Ida-Theres Karlsson (Sweden)
Mabel Fonseca (Puerto Rico)
Pool 3
Sun Dongmei (China)
Diletta Giampiccolo (Italy)
Saori Yoshida (Japan)
Pool 4
Anna Gomis (France)
Lee Na-Lae (Korea)
Sofia Poumpouridou (Greece)
63 kg/138.75 lbs.
Pool 1
Stephanie Gross (Germany)
Stavroula Zigouri (Greece)
Sara Eriksson (Sweden)
Pool 2
Lili Meng (China)
Sara McMann (United States)
Viola Yanik (Canada)
Pool 3
Volha Khilko (Belarus)
Lise Golliot-Legrand (France)
Natalia Ivanova (Tajikistan)
Pool 4
Lyudmila Golvchenko (Ukraine)
Kaori Icho (Japan)
Alena Karatashova (Russia)
72 kg/158.5 lbs.
Pool 1
Marina Gastl (Austria)
Gouzel Maniurova (Russia)
Anita Schaetzle (Germany)
Pool 2
Maria Louiza Vryoni (Greece)
Svetlana Sayenko (Ukraine)
Burmaa Ochirbat (Mongolia)
Pool 3
Wang Xu (China)
Katarzyna Juszczak (Italy)
Christine Nordhagen (Canada)
Pool 4
Kyoko Hamaguchi (Japan)
Toccara Montgomery (United States)
Stanka Hristova (Bulgaria)
************************************
Women's freestyle quotes from weigh-ins
8/21/2004
Gary Abbott/USA Wrestling
48 kg/105.5 lbs – Patricia Miranda, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Dave Schultz WC)
“The hard part is over. The fun starts tomorrow. I am glad it all has started.”
55 kg/121 lbs. – Tela O’Donnell, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Dave Schultz WC)
“I feel good. I’m excited to wrestle. Now is the time for the fun.”
63 kg/138.75 lbs. – Sara McMann, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids)
“Weigh-ins went good. I feel good. I was underweight. Everything went well. It is about freaking time it’s starting.”
72 kg/158.5 lbs. – Toccara Montgomery, Cleveland, Ohio (New York AC)
“I feel good. I will feel better after the first match tomorrow. I will take it from there. I feel confident.”
Olympic Coach Terry Steiner
“I feel good going in. We had good training camps. They are coming in confident and a clear plans. Now it is about executing the plan once they are on the mats. It is about staying relaxed and letting themselves shine. They need to take advantage of the opportunity.”
(about the draw)
“We are familiar with all the people. I though coming in here that we are the toughest here. We will have to wrestle. We have tough matches right off the bat. This is the Olympics. It is what we expected”
Olympic Coach Tricia Saunders
“The team is ready. It is more than ready. I have been waiting for this day for a long time. We are down to one at a time. Right now, it is like every other tournament. We have to beat them on the mat. Certainly, this tournament is special, but we will let the glory come back the day after tomorrow.”