These ladies are not just promoting women's wrestling, they are promoting wrestling.
Wrestling has emotional hold on these women
August 24, 2004
BY RICK TELANDER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
ATHENS, Greece -- I walk into Ano Liossia Olympic Hall, and the first thing I hear above the dull roar of the crowd is a frantic, high-pitched screech.
Down on the center wrestling mat, a tiny woman in a blue singlet with two blonde pigtails coming out of her head like antennae is bouncing around as if she has stepped on a wasps nest.
It is the Ukraine's Irina Merleni. The 22-year-old, 4-11, 105-pounder from Minitskoye has just been declared the winner of the first women's wrestling event ever held at the Olympics.
It was a doozy, too -- a double-overtime thriller against Japan's Chiharu Icho.
It clearly has unhinged Merleni.
She yelps again, throws her hands in the air, then jumps into the startled referee's arms.
She clings to him for a moment like a koala bear on a eucalyptus branch, then drops off and runs around shaking the hand of everyone she sees.
Merleni will explain her actions later, saying through an interpreter, "I was obviously overwhelmed and surprised.''
But no more surprised than those of us who, until this day, had never seen women grapple outside of the random nightclub mud pit or Jello-filled wading pool.
But check all preconceived notions, ye who enter here.
Women's wrestling is serious as an eye gouge.
There were four weight classes contested in Athens -- from 48 kilograms (105.6 pounds) to 72 kilograms (158.4 pounds) -- and trust me, guys, you would not want to mix it up with any wrestling gal within 40 pounds of your weight or a hand reach of your neck.
Five-foot Patricia Miranda of the United States finished third in the 48-kilogram group, and she actually trained with and sometimes competed for the Stanford men's team at 125 pounds.
She beat the living crud out of her bronze-medal foe, France's Angelique Berthenet, 12-4.
Afterward the vocal and thoughtful Miranda, who starts classes at Yale Law School next week, was upset she missed the gold but pleased to be part of something ground-breaking.
"Speaking to what this does for my sport is far easier than speaking to what happened out there today,'' she said, referring to the gold she wanted so badly.
To her right on the dais sat the hyperglowing Merleni. And next to Merleni sat silver medalist Icho.
The poor Japanese woman, her black hair fluffed straight out like a midnight dandelion, looked so despairing, I was glad a hara-kiri sword was not nearby.
"I got silver and not gold, I think, for lack of my courage,'' Icho said, looking down as if into the abyss.
Even the bummed-out Miranda looked startled at that.
"That was a bad-*** answer, man,'' she whispered, frowning.
See, these women are tough. And resilient. Yeah, they get spread into unladylike poses, and their hands go where ladies' hands don't go, and their faces are sometimes busted up, and if they keep doing this, they'll end up with cheese-wedge ears like those of former NCAA wrestling champ and male coach Terry Steiner.
But they bounce back. Trivialities be damned.
The ladies only have been criticized and made fun of since they began their sport some 15 years ago.
The United States' 63-kilogram (138.6 pounds) wrestler, Sara McMann, could not stop crying after her gut-wrenching 3-2 loss in the gold-medal match to Kaori Icho, Chiharu Icho's big sister.
Even three hours later, back at the Olympic press center, McMann's eyes are still swollen and periodically wet.
Maybe this is a sexist thing to say, but I can't help noticing that McMann would be an attractive young woman if her face weren't cut-up and red and there weren't a raw gash across the bridge of her oft-broken nose.
"If it were only the prize, you could buy it,'' she says of the gold that barely eluded her grasp. "Wrestling is different from a race. It's not just a muscle doing a programmed action, it's so much of your personality. It's much more about the journey.''
She was ahead in her match 2-0, based on her aggressive takedown style. Then things got away from her. She starts to tear up again.
"It's painful, difficult and beautiful all at once,'' she says of the sport she loves.
Of the beating a wrestling gal's face takes, she says: "It's a small price to pay. It's worth it -- every joy, every heartbreak.''
Miranda understands both the exuberance of Merleni and the despondency of Chiharu Icho and McMann.
And she knows this sport is a perfect one for off-color hoots from the guys.
So be it. She is certain little girls everywhere would enjoy the sport, if they could just get past the stigma. After all, is a crotch hold any less embarrassing for fellows than for chicks?
"I can't count how many people were skeptical of my wrestling,'' she says.
Looking at her from certain angles, I can see that she, too, might have been glamorous, had she not been battered by her sport. Women who are not vain about their looks are tough to quantify. Unnerving, even.
I ask Miranda, then, if women should do every sport that a man does, from Olympic boxing to the decathlon to tree-chopping.
"Unless you can really convince me that it is something you need a penis to do,''' she says with a smile.
All right.
One, two, three. Pin!
Rick Telander does commentary at 9 p.m. Sunday on "Fox Sports Net Across America.'' Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com with name, hometown and daytime phone number (letters run Sunday).
