(Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)7:21 AM - J'den entered the weigh-in room
8:13 AM - J'den made weight
Those are the stamp stamps officially recorded.
And how do we know this?
Every athlete, coach, trainer, official, administrator, and media member admitted to the Olympic Trials had, hanging from a Nike lanyard, a credential around their neck. On the back of that credential was a bar code. Any time you entered a building or designated area, that barcode was scanned. The time that J'den entered the workout room, which also doubled as the weigh-in area. J'den's barcode was scanned at 7:21 AM, 39 minutes prior to the scales closing.
On Friday morning, when rumblings started surfacing that there was some issue, I tweeted this:
J'den is not in the brackets.
�" Wrestling 🧠(@MatScoutWillie) April 2, 2021
Some said J'den hadn't weighed in. But then I got a text that J'den did, in fact, make weight - at which time I tweeted, erroneously,
I was just told that J'den made weight at the buzzer and the bracket will be updated.
�" Wrestling 🧠(@MatScoutWillie) April 2, 2021
The reason for my error was that 1) I didn't know that he made the weight after the designated time and 2) perhaps a reluctance or fear to believe J'den would be out.
I confirmed with several more people - coaches, athletes, and media present at the scales - the J'den had, in fact, weighed in late. And then USA Wrestling released a statement confirming the worst-case scenario - that J'den was out.
I spent the rest of the morning - the time between weigh-ins and the first whistle - with several key members of J'den's camp as they shook their heads and tried to gather information. It was me, Jaydin Eierman, Mike Eierman, and J'den's Uncle Phil (also known as Gabe Arnold's father).
It was then that I was first told that J'den was under the impression that the scales would be open longer. As the story goes, USA Wrestling's Developmental Coach and Olympic Gold medalist Kevin Jackson, who also serves as J'den's personal coach, had told J'den the wrong weigh-in times.
According to them, J'den was encouraged to sign an appeal stating that a USA Wrestling employee misinformed him, but that J'den was very reluctant to either implicate Jackson or put him under scrutiny. Eventually, with prodding from his camp and Coach Jackson himself, he did file an appeal detailing those circumstances.
After learning all this, I wrote the following article on our sister site MatScouts
A committee was formed to hear the appeal, which was ultimately denied.
It wasn't until Saturday, during the wrestleback rounds, that I was able to talk to J'den himself. He was walking past my press seat and I told him, "keep your head up."
J'den promptly sat down and told me what had transpired, which was pretty much the spitting image of the picture I had been given by his camp 30 hrs prior.
The twist was that, according to J'den, when he stepped on the scale at 8:13 AM and made 97 kilograms, he believed nothing was amiss. J'den said it wasn't until "about an hour later", after he left the building, he was informed that his weigh-in didn't count.
Indeed, people in the workout room said that when J'den arrived at the workout room, he didn't appear to be in a panic or rush; he warmed up casually and was his usual, jovial self. Those sources say he didn't really start getting his heart rate up until around 7:40 / 7:45. J'den noted that he arrived 2lbs over - which is easy to shed with a light workout for him and most wrestlers.
Several standers-by said that on J'den's first attempt to weigh-in, he was .4 lbs over. Again, that's easy for a wrestler of J'den's caliber. However, they were up against the clock.
And it seems that Coach Jackson may have realized the error late. People in the room say that Jackson came running across the workout mats shouting, "J'den, we gotta go." Those same people say J'den tried out several scales prior to 8:00 AM and the most repeated figure was that J'den was in .2 kg's over.
The final question I had was: "Why was J'den allowed to even step on the scales after 8:00?"
I wasn't able to ascertain that until a Sunday morning conversation with a USA Wrestling official. I've been in the weigh-in room at dozens of USA Wrestling trials and/or UWW World Championships and when time is up, the scales are closed. That's, that.
What I was told was that J'den was allowed to make the weight - in front of the weighmaster and all necessary officials - in order to have documentation in case of appeal or arbitration.
In response to my "Keep your head up," J'den's first words were, "Everyone keeps saying that. I'll be fine. I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying at 97kg and winning that spot from here on out."
For J'den's part, he says there are two things most upsetting for him:
1) USA Wrestling not recognizing Kevin Jackson as a part of their team and ruling that KJ's guidance on weigh-in times did not affect his course of action
2) That USA Wrestling wouldn't make some sort of remedy - namely that they wouldn't do as he suggested and allow him to weigh in at 4:30 PM Friday night (2 hrs before his first match).
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