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World champ says women should grapple at Games

Nordhagen-Vierling would rather fight than watch

Larry Tucker, Calgary Herald

Thursday 14 September 2000

Christine Nordhagen-Vierling should be starring in the Olympic Games, not watching them on television.

The 29-year-old Calgary high school teacher recently returned from Bulgaria, where she won the women's world championship in freestyle wrestling. It's her fifth world title. Under different circumstances, she'd be a star in a spotlight.

But only men will grapple for gold in Australia. The Olympic Games have no such competition for females.

"Women's wrestling should be in the Olympics," said Nordhagen-Vierling. "It's obvious. It's one of the oldest sports, from the first Olympics. It makes total sense to have wrestling for both men and women."

That always made sense to her, particularly when Nordhagen-Vierling was growing up near Valhalla Centre, north of Grande Prairie. With only about 50 people in the hamlet, co-ed was the only way to go if they were going to have enough players to form a team.

"We'd go to slo-pitch tournaments and afterward I'd be wrestling with boys on the team. I was good at it," she said. "It was fun to take a boy a couple of years older than me, put him on his back and keep him there."

Rambunctious, competitive and tough, she took her inspiration from her mother, Lillian.

"My mom can do anything," she said of the woman who could still beat her world champion daughter in an arm-wrestling match only a couple of years ago.

"It's not like my dad did all the work outside on the farm and mom just cooked and cleaned. Whether it was fixing the combine or hauling bales, they'd both do the work."

With five kids in the family, there was always some sort of activity around the Nordhagen home. Usually it was a friendly scrap between Christine and her brother Colin, two years her junior.

"We had some great fights," she said. "In fact, two years ago we were kidding around and started fighting, just for old time's sake. But we broke the glass in mom's china cabinet and we're not allowed to do that any more."

Her introduction to the competitive side of freestyle wrestling came nine years ago with enrolment to the University of Alberta. Thinking she might have to teach the sport some day, she enrolled in a six-week activity course.

"I was the only girl in the class, but I didn't care," she said.

One of the instructors, spotting potential, urged her to stay with it since women's wrestling was being introduced at the national level in Canada. So she began to show up at U of A team workouts, again the only female.

"I understood it all. The wrestling room was a place for male bonding time. When women came in, coaches had to make new rules,'' said Nordhagen-Vierling.

"There was no swearing because there were girls in the room, as if that makes any difference. And they couldn't make sexist remarks they shouldn't have been making in the first place.

"But I needed the competition to get better and the only way was to go to university practices with the boys. At first, there were some guys who refused to wrestle me.

"When I moved to Calgary in 1994, I had to start all over again. It was a little awkward at first. Some guys were great from the very beginning, others . . .

"I remember thinking: 'You can't jump into any team and expect to be treated like a teammate.' I had to earn my stripes as someone new to the group. Eventually, they start to treat you like a wrestler. Like part of the group."

She and many other outstanding female athletes have become an integral part of the successful University of Calgary wrestling teams, at varsity and club levels.

"About half the members from the national team are from Calgary," she said. "Trish Leibel was fourth in the world in 62 kilos, Erica Sharp was second in the world last year in 51 kilos, Breanne Graham was third at the junior worlds."

Nordhagen-Vierling's own career on the circular mat has been nothing short of outstanding. She captured the world 68 kilo title four times, going undefeated through four full years of competition. Two years ago her coach, Leigh Vierling, whom she wed last December, suggested Christine challenge herself with a move up to the tough 78 kilo division.

She did and only lost twice in 1999, both her victors (Japan's Kyoto Hamaguchi and Edyta Witkowska of Poland) finishing first and second, respectively, at the worlds. Nordhagen-Vierling finished third.

Under Vierling's tutelage, she immediately began preparing for 2000, specifically targetyed those two wrestlers, who figured to be the ones she'd have to beat.

When this year's competition opened in Sofia, Nordhagen-Vierling didn't know if she'd be able to beat anyone. Violently ill for days ("my teammate and I brushed our teeth with tap water, I'm sure that's what did it"), she'd lost strength and weight. An unsolicited scheduling change, fortunately delaying her semi-final bout with Hamaguchi 24 hours, came as a gift from the blue.

"I was real fortunate. If we'd had to wrestle the night before, I was so sick it would have been different," she said. "But this match with her was totally different. I'd been wrestling her all year, trying to find ways to take away her strengths."

She beat the defending champion in the semis and, sure enough, found Witkowska waiting in the finals. Once again, preparation paid off. The Polish athlete could only earn two points. Nordhagen-Vierling earned six, and the title.

But no Olympic trip.

She knows she isn't the first athlete to be frustrated like this. But progress is being made. Women are to vie for Olympic Games water polo medals for the first time this year and speculation is women's wrestling might have a chance to be part of the show four years hence in Athens, Greece.

"We'll find out after the Games in Australia," she said. "If they're going to be in, I'll try to go on. I went to see my husband compete in the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg. I was quite excited, but I was jealous as the same time. I've never had an opportunity to be part of such a huge athletic group.

"That was just at the Pan Am Games. I can just imagine what the Olympics must be like. At the ceremonies, when Canada marched in, I cried I had such pride in everyone. I'd just like to experience that. I don't know if I can."

Meanwhile, the math students at Ernest Manning High School might be in for a treat during the coming days.

"I'll keep the TV on in my classroom if wrestling is on," said Nordhagen-Vierling.