Sunday, August 29, 2004 1:50:29 PM
A step short of the promised land
Pain of second place can be almost overwhelming
Ricardo Mazalan / AP
Japan's Kaori Icho, left, celebrates her gold-medal victory as Sara McMann of the U.S.
leaves the mat in dejection after the women's freestyle 63kg wrestling final.
COMMENTARY
By Jim Litke
Associated Press columnist
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:14 p.m. ET Aug. 23, 2004
ATHENS, Greece - The brother who taught Sara McMann how to wrestle is gone. The trial of the man charged with his murder is scheduled this fall, soon after she makes her way home from the Olympics.
The sport she put her life on hold to pursue may disappear from the Summer Games almost as quickly as it arrived.
And there she sat with a silver medal around her neck, weeping so uncontrollably it would break your heart.
“I don’t think there’s anything more painful in the world,” McMann said.
It’s sad how often you hear things like that from athletes who lose in the finals of sports that are making their Olympic debut. They are pioneers, fearless and overachievers by nature. They’ve sacrificed more, endured more pain and bottled up their emotions just to continue the long, difficult march to find a place to play. They don’t have to be told to act like ambassadors. They always know exactly what’s at stake.
And maybe that’s why, the moment they finish a step short of the promised land, all that hurt comes spilling out.
“I just felt like I did everything I could, worked as hard as I could,” McMann said, “and it just wasn’t good enough.”
She is a bright, 23-year-old who will return from Athens and move from the U.S. Olympic Committee’s training facility in Colorado to Washington, D.C., with her boyfriend, former Arizona State wrestler Steven Blackford. He’s going to law school at Catholic University. She plans to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology.
Stories like hers are all over women’s wrestling, just as they are in women’s hockey, soccer and softball. McMann’s teammate, Patricia Miranda, who won a bronze Monday night, got two degrees from Stanford and deferred her admission to Yale Law School for two years to be here.
“I don’t know,” Miranda said, when asked about sticking around to wrestle in 2008 at Beijing — assuming the International Olympic Committee doesn’t yank the sport in an effort to streamline the games.
“Maybe I’ll be able to shake it out of my blood by then. Either way,” she said, referring to law school, “I’m looking forward to the climb from the bottom of another mountain.”
That is hardly an exaggeration. Both McMann and Miranda wrestled against boys most of their school careers, never complaining when teammates punished them in grueling practices for the incontrovertible sin of being a girl. Both eventually won the boys over, but the indignities never stopped there. Sometimes, opposing teams simply forfeited matches or faked injuries rather than wrestle them. Other times, those teams sent out boys who were a few years older and more skilled than any of their counterparts.
McMann went through her senior year of high school with a 15-13 mark against all-male competition, a tribute not just to a tireless work ethic, but the time her older brother, Jason, put in teaching Sara to love wrestling when they were kids.
Five years ago, Jason McMann was beaten unconscious, driven to a remote part of Clinton County, Pa., and left to die. Prosecutors there said the slaying was drug-related, and it shook the McMann family, perhaps Sara most of all. Her life rent by tragedy, wrestling became the vehicle that helped her move on.
“It only comforts me that my brother would have been proud of me either way,” McMann said, her eyes swollen and red, matching the dried blood from a cut across the bridge of her nose.
Everybody who saw her defeated by reigning world champion Kaori Icho of Japan had to feel the same way. The two have trained together, fought each other a handful of times and this time, Icho strung together three consecutive takedowns, the final one with 23 seconds left, to score a 3-2 win in the 138 1/2-pound (63 kg) gold medal match.
“She’s my best rival,” Icho said. “When our eyes meet, we smile, and sometimes it’s a bitter smile.”
A half-hour earlier, Icho’s sister, Chihari, was beaten by Irina Merleni of the Ukraine in the final of the 105 1/2 (48 kg) class. She, too, came to the interview room and sat there, her features the definition of disconsolate.
Japan is a powerhouse in the emerging sport, but it wasn’t a failure to meet the expectations of a nation, or even of the packed crowd of mostly her countrymen, that left Chihari despondent. The pain was purely her own.
And when asked if she took any joy at all in winning the silver, she said through an interpreter: “The word ‘joy’ is not what I’m feeling. All I’m feeling is regret.”
Miranda, who’d been beaten by Merleni earlier, sat at the end of the same table, a smile offsetting a large welt peaking out from the corner of her right eye. She understood better than anyone in the room exactly how Chihari felt. But Miranda also understood it was time to move on.
“I hope in time,” she said softly, with a glance at Chihari, “that would change.”
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Pain of second place can be almost overwhelming
Ricardo Mazalan / AP
Japan's Kaori Icho, left, celebrates her gold-medal victory as Sara McMann of the U.S.
leaves the mat in dejection after the women's freestyle 63kg wrestling final.
COMMENTARY
By Jim Litke
Associated Press columnist
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:14 p.m. ET Aug. 23, 2004
ATHENS, Greece - The brother who taught Sara McMann how to wrestle is gone. The trial of the man charged with his murder is scheduled this fall, soon after she makes her way home from the Olympics.
The sport she put her life on hold to pursue may disappear from the Summer Games almost as quickly as it arrived.
And there she sat with a silver medal around her neck, weeping so uncontrollably it would break your heart.
“I don’t think there’s anything more painful in the world,” McMann said.
It’s sad how often you hear things like that from athletes who lose in the finals of sports that are making their Olympic debut. They are pioneers, fearless and overachievers by nature. They’ve sacrificed more, endured more pain and bottled up their emotions just to continue the long, difficult march to find a place to play. They don’t have to be told to act like ambassadors. They always know exactly what’s at stake.
And maybe that’s why, the moment they finish a step short of the promised land, all that hurt comes spilling out.
“I just felt like I did everything I could, worked as hard as I could,” McMann said, “and it just wasn’t good enough.”
She is a bright, 23-year-old who will return from Athens and move from the U.S. Olympic Committee’s training facility in Colorado to Washington, D.C., with her boyfriend, former Arizona State wrestler Steven Blackford. He’s going to law school at Catholic University. She plans to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology.
Stories like hers are all over women’s wrestling, just as they are in women’s hockey, soccer and softball. McMann’s teammate, Patricia Miranda, who won a bronze Monday night, got two degrees from Stanford and deferred her admission to Yale Law School for two years to be here.
“I don’t know,” Miranda said, when asked about sticking around to wrestle in 2008 at Beijing — assuming the International Olympic Committee doesn’t yank the sport in an effort to streamline the games.
“Maybe I’ll be able to shake it out of my blood by then. Either way,” she said, referring to law school, “I’m looking forward to the climb from the bottom of another mountain.”
That is hardly an exaggeration. Both McMann and Miranda wrestled against boys most of their school careers, never complaining when teammates punished them in grueling practices for the incontrovertible sin of being a girl. Both eventually won the boys over, but the indignities never stopped there. Sometimes, opposing teams simply forfeited matches or faked injuries rather than wrestle them. Other times, those teams sent out boys who were a few years older and more skilled than any of their counterparts.
McMann went through her senior year of high school with a 15-13 mark against all-male competition, a tribute not just to a tireless work ethic, but the time her older brother, Jason, put in teaching Sara to love wrestling when they were kids.
Five years ago, Jason McMann was beaten unconscious, driven to a remote part of Clinton County, Pa., and left to die. Prosecutors there said the slaying was drug-related, and it shook the McMann family, perhaps Sara most of all. Her life rent by tragedy, wrestling became the vehicle that helped her move on.
“It only comforts me that my brother would have been proud of me either way,” McMann said, her eyes swollen and red, matching the dried blood from a cut across the bridge of her nose.
Everybody who saw her defeated by reigning world champion Kaori Icho of Japan had to feel the same way. The two have trained together, fought each other a handful of times and this time, Icho strung together three consecutive takedowns, the final one with 23 seconds left, to score a 3-2 win in the 138 1/2-pound (63 kg) gold medal match.
“She’s my best rival,” Icho said. “When our eyes meet, we smile, and sometimes it’s a bitter smile.”
A half-hour earlier, Icho’s sister, Chihari, was beaten by Irina Merleni of the Ukraine in the final of the 105 1/2 (48 kg) class. She, too, came to the interview room and sat there, her features the definition of disconsolate.
Japan is a powerhouse in the emerging sport, but it wasn’t a failure to meet the expectations of a nation, or even of the packed crowd of mostly her countrymen, that left Chihari despondent. The pain was purely her own.
And when asked if she took any joy at all in winning the silver, she said through an interpreter: “The word ‘joy’ is not what I’m feeling. All I’m feeling is regret.”
Miranda, who’d been beaten by Merleni earlier, sat at the end of the same table, a smile offsetting a large welt peaking out from the corner of her right eye. She understood better than anyone in the room exactly how Chihari felt. But Miranda also understood it was time to move on.
“I hope in time,” she said softly, with a glance at Chihari, “that would change.”
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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