After three days I still haven’t seen my first USA individual gold medal, but I won’t complain about what I have seen. Although our two freestyle wrestlers did not place today, our final Greco Roman wrestler, Dremiel Byers, won a bronze medal. In doing so, he accomplished one of the two things that needed to happen for the U.S. to claim our first ever team World Championship in Greco Roman wrestling. The second fell into place when Lopez (Cuba) beat Baroev (Russia) for the individual gold medal. I know from these wrestler’s bios that they have met at least twice before and each time the Russian prevailed; but this time was the Cuban’s turn. With his victory, we clinched the title by one slim point! It was one of the few times that I ever remember enthusiastically rooting for a Cuban!
On other thoughts from the World Championships, I am amazed and impressed at the fans from Iran. They take up two large sections of the seats on opposite sides of the arena and sing, chant, clap and play horns and drums to cheer for the wrestlers. Even when they aren’t wrestling you can still hear them cheering (not sure what they’re cheering for, but they always seem pretty enthusiastic about it). I’ve talked with a few of the Iranians and they are always quick to say that the Iranian people like Americans and that it is the governments that don’t get along. I don’t know if I believe that is necessarily true for most Iranians, but the wrestling fans here seem sincere.
Another thing that I’ve noticed is the seating habits of different nationalities. When I was sitting next to several of our wrestlers and coaches today, I noticed that everyone automatically would sit with one seat separating them. As the bleachers would fill up, they would compress next to each other to make room, but the initial reaction was to establish some personal space. On the other hand, I regularly see fans from other countries, particularly the Azerbaijanis, who will sit next to each other, even leaning into each other, regardless of whether there are open seats of not. I will admit that I would prefer to have some space around me and would be uncomfortable sitting as closely as some of the other nations seem to. I’m not sure what that means, but I found it interesting.
Back to the wrestling, another non-USA wrestler that we were all cheering for (after his first match, that is) was Sait Prizreni. Sait defeated Mike Zadick in his first match, which meant that Zadick was finished unless Prizreni made it to the finals. Making this a little more palatable was the fact that Sait had lived in the U.S. for several years, training with and developing friendships with some of our team members. Unfortunately Sait was beaten in the semi-finals, coming one match shy of getting Mike Zadick back into the competition.
Since both of our freestyle wrestlers were eliminated, and Byer’s bronze medal match wouldn’t start until 6:00, I took my first break from the tournament thus far and went back to the hotel to go for a short run. I generally run or bike daily, but since I arrived I’ve only gotten one workout in since I arrived in Baku. Both times that I ran I noticed that I never saw another runner, something that rarely happens when I run in any populated area in the U.S. Not only were there not any runners, but I noticed that I was getting lots of strange looks. Probably amazed that that old fat man could run so fast (at least that’s what I kept telling myself!).
I hope you’re enjoying these reports. If you’d like to get more information on the championships, I’d suggest going to
TheMat.com's Special Coverage or
FILA's coverage.
