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2003 Freestyle World Championships- Session 1 Mini Gallery - Photos by Danielle Hobeika
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Phillipa wrestles with world title ambitions;
MICHELLE CAZZULINO 9/9/03
The Daily Telegraph
ON the soft sand of Bondi Beach Hakoah Club, Phillipa Katonivualiku
sizes up fellow world champion wrestler Andrew Gorton, takes a deep breath and
tosses him over her shoulder like a rag doll. Earlier, she had left word with
The Daily Telegraph that she was recognisable by her ``curly brown hair'',
but in light of the grown man dangling across her back, the physical
description of herself seemed largely unnecessary.
At 33, Ms Katonivualiku is the newly-crowned jiu-jitsu world champion.
But for the past three weeks she has been focusing her energies
exclusively on taking on the wrestling world, with a view to conquering it too --
with less than three months' training behind her.
What she lacks in competition experience Ms Katonivualiku makes up for
with enthusiasm, technique and sheer, brute strength.
At just over 180cm and weighing 72kgs, she is able to lift her coach,
former Australian Olympic wrestler Igor Praporshchikov, who tips the scales at
almost 100kgs.
She now spends most mornings running laps of the Hakoah Club with him
on her back.
If she's in the mood for a more torturous session, she heads down to
Bondi Beach and repeats the exercise on dry sand.
Tomorrow she will fly to New York, where she will compete for Australia
in the world wrestling championships.
In doing so, she will pit her skills against those of women around the
world who have been wrestling since they were children.
It'd be enough to make the average athlete reasonably nervous -- but Ms
Katonivualiku is no ordinary athlete.
``There's not much I can do now, or learn now. I'm just going to work
on my strengths and whatever skills I do have,'' she said.
``I haven't got much experience, and I feel like I've got so much to
learn in such a short space of time, but I did well at the [wrestling]
nationals with only two months' training, so hopefully I'm going to go over there
and do very well.
``These girls have been training since they were young, but Igor says
anyone who can pick him up and run has got a chance.''
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Opportunities Growing for Women
By RICHARD SANDOMIR 9/12/03
Patricia Miranda wrestled on the boys' and men's teams through nine years of high school and college. She dealt with older high school teammates trying to make her quit and the strength advantage that most males had over her.
"I was particularly bad when I started," she said earlier this week before competition started today at the World Championships of Freestyle Wrestling at Madison Square Garden. "I practiced O.K., but I'd freeze up when I was fighting someone. And I thought, 'I can't be this bad.' It didn't come easy. I had to keep facing my fears. I knew I wasn't the most talented, but there was an equalizing force in wrestling: enough heart and effort could make up for a lack of talent."
Miranda, 24, who wrestles in the smallest weight class -105.5 pounds - said competing against males underscored the value of her physical conditioning.
"The amount of pain I could go through was higher; I can deal with setbacks because I had lost for a long time," she said, recalling that she needed four of her five years at Stanford University to win a match against a male wrestler. "To wrestle guys, I'd weather the storm, and score points at the end of the match because I out-conditioned them. I learned very good positioning and how to offset their strength advantage."
Seventy countries are sending 500 wrestlers to the championships, with men's powers like Iran and Russia sending strong teams; Cuba, usually a formidable country, only sent three wrestlers in seven weight categories. On the women's side, the Japanese, Russian and Ukrainian teams are considered top contenders.
The United States is sending seven women and seven men to the worlds, and four members of each squad won gold medals at the Pan American Games last month in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
"We feel legitimately that we can medal every girl," said Terry Steiner, who became the women's coach last year.
Bobby Douglas, the men's coach, who finished fourth in his weight class at the 1964 Summer Olympics, said, "This is the most talented team I've ever been affiliated with, but it's difficult to know where we fit into the world picture."
The United States did not participate in last year's world championships in Iran because of terrorist threats against the team. In 2001, when the event was supposed to be in New York, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks forced the championships to be moved to Bulgaria and Greece. Slovakia, which was supposed to be the host of this year's world freestyle event, stepped aside for New York.
"The experience we didn't get was like a football team that sits out for a season," Douglas said.
"It was a difficult experience," said Kerry McCoy, a New York native who is a four-time national champion and who finished fifth at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. "There are guys who made the team last year who didn't make it this year."
One of his teammates is Cael Sanderson, 24, who did not lose in 159 matches at Iowa State. Douglas, Sanderson's college coach, said that the 185-pound wrestler has made "rapid improvement" but needs more international experience. "He was under intense scrutiny in college and there's a lot of pressure on him," he said. "He feels he has to do well. He's not having a lot of fun under the pressure."
Although wrestling has been a traditionally male domain, with stars like Rulon Gardner, Dan Gable and Bruce Baumgartner, women's wrestling is growing in popularity despite the presence of just six women's varsity teams in the United States. Several hundred men's programs have been cut through compliance with Title IX regulations and financial reasons. Female wrestlers are also coming from high schools and clubs.
The International Olympic Committee made women's freestyle an Olympic sport starting next year in Athens. But while the I.O.C. started women's wrestling with four weight classes, it reduced by one, to seven, the number of weight classifications for men.
"Women's wrestling will save wrestling," Douglas said. "They bring the media, which is something the men can't do."
McCoy was not as certain.
"It's a possibility," he said. "But people look at men's and women's wrestling as separate entities. As separate entities, women's wrestling can't help men's wrestling. It has to be looked at as wrestling for the greater good."
Steiner - a three-time N.C.A.A. champion who runs the women's wrestling program at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs - is a convert.
"A lot of coaches think wrestling should be a guy's sport," he said. "And I had that bias, too. When USA Wrestling asked me, I didn't know if I could be an advocate for women's wrestling. It was really ignorance on my part. But once I started talking to the girls, I realized they fell in love with the sport the same way we did. My change in attitude has come full circle."
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Athlete quotes from Session 1 of the World Freestyle Championships
9/12/2003
John Fuller/USA Wrestling
Women's 48 kg/105.5 lbs. - Patricia Miranda dec. Lyndsay Belisle (Canada), 3-1
"This is one of the reasons that I don't look at outcomes. It's not the outcome of the match, but how I wrestled."
"I could have done some things different. I was changing my level a little bit, but I wasn't getting my opponent to move. That is something I need to work on in my next match."
Women's 51 kg/112.25 lbs. - Jenny Wong dec. Yura Gandolgor (Mongolia), 5-0
"I would have liked to have gotten my offense off a little bit, but I am happy to come out with the win."
"It's chaotic coming into this arena, but Trish (Saunders) just wanted me to stay calm going in and it really helped."
Women's 55 kg/121 lbs. - Tina George dec. Julieta Okot (Bulgaria), 9-3
"She's one of my training partners in Colorado Springs. We knew each other very well. I had to really put things in perspective when I found out she was my first match and realize that one of us wants to make the finals and I want it to be me."
Women's 59 kg/130 lbs. - Sally Roberts pinned Aikaterina-Ko Tsimpanakou (Greece), 2:20
"I wasn't nervous at all. I needed to do a little moving to get pumped up. It took me about 30 seconds to get going out there."
"I just had a good feel for her. I just knew to take her to her back."
"I'm on fire. This is the greatest feeling I have ever had."
Women's 63 kg/138.75 lbs. - Sara McMann pinned Sara Eriksson (Sweden), 5:38
"She's such a tough competitor. I thought it was going to be a six-minute match."
"Terry (Steiner) and I were working on this match months ago. We actually have been preparing for this match for a year."
"I've definitely shown that I'm a long ways from where I was last year."
Women's 67 kg/147.5 lbs. - Kristie Marano pinned Jodeen Marie MacGregor (New Zealand), 2:18
"It was nice to get the first one out of the way. I felt the pressure a little bit coming out there, but I just wrestled and it all went away."
"Wrestling here is different. I flipped out the first time everybody started chanting 'USA'. It's really motivating."
Women's 72 kg/158.5 lbs. - Toccara Montgomery dec. Zarife Yildirim (Turkey), 7-0
"This feels like any other tournament because I didn't have to travel for this one. This atmosphere makes you want to wrestled hard and give your all."
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Athlete quotes from Session 2 of the World Freestyle Championships
9/12/2003
John Fuller/USA Wrestling
Women's 55 kg/121 lbs. - Tina George pinned Ludmila Christea (Moldova), 2:36
"I got my bell run pretty good this morning. For this match, I felt good and got a good warm-up in. I trusted my training and trusted my conditioning and got through it."
"That thing that I pinned her with wasn't a move that I normally do, but it was there and I took it."
Women's 59 kg/130 lbs. - Sally Roberts dec. Stefanie Stueber (Germany), 10-3
"I wasn't nervous at all. Basically, I just wanted to go for a tech, but I should have just stuck with my 9-1 lead."
"I am really relaxed, really confident and I have so much support that even an idiot can believe in themselves."
Women's 67 kg/147.5 lbs. - Kristie Marano tech. fall Martina Zyklova (Czech Republic), 10-0, 4:10
"I'm super excited because I feel good right now. I was nervous coming into the tournament about some of the mistakes I have been making, but everything seems to be coming together for me."