wrestle87

A question I an curious about, bc I really have no idea, did just calling all the russian athleted “Independent” do anything at all on the russian side besides keeping them from playing the russian national anthem and flying the flag. If you change what athletes compete under, but still have all russian athletes competing as the same common name, is that really changing anything? Russia can still point to its athletes domestically and celebrate their successes all the same. And ostensibly russia’s athletes got the same compensation for medaling

It hurts the athletes, but it also hurts the governments tremendously. In countries that don’t have the sort of athletic infrastructure that the US does, the olympics are professional sports, but more importantly a major rallying point to drum up nationalism and simultaneously drown out domestic issues. This is why the Olympics are so important to a country like China. Olympic success is part of a much more internecine machine that empowers the incumbent rulers and regimes. Countries that are top-down oppressive rely on events like the olympics to serve as justification for rallying cries and domestic propaganda. The olympics are not the same thing to all countries.

Keeps the heat in when cutting weight. Same reason wrists and ankles are taped.

I believe this about just about any other wrestler on the team, Sasso is the Ohio State flag bearer, Tom Ryan would bury that or strategically pretend he didn’t hear about it. The ramifications for the program would be too vast.

Are we also going to say that all US wrestlers are squeaky clean? I dislike this assumption, since we so readily believe other countries will get saucy, shall we say. As support to our blindness, I offer Icarus and Carl Lewis. We definitely have a system set up to support our athletes in getting every vitamin possible, we are eager to pretend it doesn’t exist.

I gotta say, I’d be thrilled if it weren’t the case bc he just hosed the two best 97’s from last year handily, but I’m pretty sure Tazh had a hearty mix of Mohammadian and Boltokaev blood in his gatorade bottles. Little bit of Vitamin T with the ol Trenbologny sandwich goes a long way at worlds, but somehow always gets snagged at the olympics…for wrestlers at least.

I hear you on this, but that would do a disservice to the entire 92kg weight class. Zahid was able to beat them, but Brooks might not have gotten through them, crazy as it sounds. He never wrestled the matches, can’t do that to the competitors.

Thanks. And, yeah, I mean, in that event what else are you supposed to do? You can’t put that on the Brands or anybody else. You have the environment you have. That’s really brutal and impressive that they pushed through that.

Are these for real? I had no idea, and my goodness does that immediately change my view of so much in our sport. Not for the better either. I hope it’s not true, and that it was something like finishing out a cycle and sticking with the training partners you had at the time.

Kinda related to that, why the heck don’t any of the UC system have programs? Southern california and Austin seem to be developing into the mecca’s of Jiu jitsu globally. That much cauliflower ear in town and we can’t swing teams in those cities?

I’m sorry, I might have missed something who is BIG?

It sure would be if that was what was happening wouldn’t it. Good thing that’s not what it was, and it wasn’t meant for you. Discussing J’den’s spotty performance in recent years is a simple discussion of facts. We have seen tremendous things out of him, but considering that he himself has opened up about the really really dark places some of his motivation comes from, I would take it as a great thing if he had grown, healed, or moved beyond whatever it was that put such an incredible fire within him. Go watch the Flo documentary on him if you haven’t yet, then re-read what I’m saying. Or, you may be too young yet to understand what that means.

For J’den it certainly is, I’m not sure Kyle even worries about it anymore. If J’den still has goals in wrestling, he is working towards being one of the best athletes to miss out on the potential that they have. I will say, if he doesn’t still really have goals in wrestling, I hope he knows that’s OK and he can move to the next stage in life. He’s an incredibly dynamic individual who has a lot to offer the world in many ways. He doesn’t have to just sweat, diet, and wrestle.

It would be fantastic for the sport for Mexico to develop a real team, even if they are all imports to start. And in this day and age, take the route available to you. If Zahid goes 86 in Mexico, and finds a way into the olympics, he could be a threat to medal. That only does great things for US wrestling as well, and helps show the strength of different programs. Think about what a big deal it is for Bormet to have Amine’s bronze to the michigan program’s name. More medals attributed to OTC’s, I’m all for it.

Gilman looked like he had a terrible cut, to the extent he didn’t even look surprised by the end of match 2. He’s been at it a long time, and while I generally pull team nittany lion, his success coming out of that room at his weight was an exception rather than the rule. NLWC certainly knows how to get guys big and strong and how to be successful in new larger frames, but that is always predicated upon the availability of a relatively close next weight class to access. They have never been able to consistently produce for the 125/57kg weight class. This many years into raging success at all other weights but heavyweight, I have a hard time seeing gilman’s success as anything other than deviation from the mean.

That's freaking impressive, and man, that has to make you question cutting weight if he is showing up 8 pounds light and outplacing all but 3 people in the nation at 197.

Agreed about the coach, that was the last conversation I had with him. Were you D1/2/3 NAIA? Did you pull any weight? Our heavyweights and 197’s had a grand time during the season. Everyone else had 2x the workload making weight. And what did you study? Let’s keep in mind the entire conversation is about Koll complaining because he is comparing himself to teams vying for a d1 title. There are exceptional people who can do exceptional things, and they are impressive for it. Relying on the exceptional is not a plan, it is a demonstrated lack of a plan. Academic demand, as with anything else outside of wrestling, will always be anathema to peak excellence in wrestling, and most other sports. If you are doing something as difficult and demanding as wrestling, you can’t be spending immense amounts of energy outside the sport, it takes too much. The demands placed on student time at the top academic schools are infinitely higher than at your average D1 program, which is an immediate draw on time. This is why Cornell benefits from the Ag School so much. Similarly, kids who would consider those top three schools WANT that other thing beyond wrestling, which means comparatively, they aren’t as 100% committed as the kid who decides they don’t care about an education, they are just there to wrestle. And with the service academies, that makes my point. They have tremendous out of program requirements. They will never challenge for a title because their demands are divided.

I hear you on this one, but it’s also a fine line because we need to keep this line of earnest discourse alive, otherwise everything becomes sterile tap dancing innuendo and sideways mentions of internet rumors like the Flo podcast is now. Unspoken innuendo and raised eyebrows is the most disgusting version of discussion and reporting, and as off-putting as foul language may be, especially if you are trying to listen with younger wrestlers, frank conversation is at an increasing premium everywhere.

Well, some kids are truly superhuman. Otherwise, look at the specific major they are signed up for. Not all majors are the same workload. Cornell may also allow for transfer of credits, completion of pre-reqs and other courses for special cases with the best athletes at one of the school’s best athletic teams. Summer enrollment, extended semesters, etc. The successful wrestlers at big schools are meaningful members of the institution, and schools tend to do what is necessary to ensure that those who contribute to the image of the school are taken care of.

It’s like a heavy frisbee

This is brutal, and really makes me feel bad for what some wrestlers run into in terms of abrasive personalities and bad coaches in their pursuit of their own goals. I sure as heck can say it also mirrors a lot of my own experience back in the day dealing with coaches in recruiting and then wrestling in college. I’m sorry to say at the college level, my personal experience was that more than half of the coaches I had long term interactions with were angry and duplicitous people who made their athletes lived and skills worse. There are the rare individuals who truly care about building relationships, supporting and developing their athletes into human beings of character, but my goodness was it few and far between. Direct quote from an old teammate, “Yeah, it sucked, but the upside was it made me find things to care about outside wrestling.”

No sweat no sweat

Yup, I was asking about Oregon State. Unless I’m being particularly dense, I didn’t see anything in the link about that.

Uh…so not to be that guy, but what is this about? I missed this one.

Evidence could be found in…the lack of total aggregate program results. As a quick exercise: Step 1: Go ahead and name the best teams from princeton, harvard, and stanford by individual placement at ncaa’s and compare them to the same from Iowa, Penn State, and Oklahoma State. Step 2: Theeeeen…take the best teams from each of those same six schools based on what they are doing professionally ten years after their last wrestling match and compare the results. In each of these steps, you will find that one set is oddly unlike the other set.