Olympic wrestlers risk it all to make weight
BEIJING -- T.C. Dantzler just spent 50 minutes on his stationary bicycle, and was exhausted. He could barely talk, which is something for him.
But 50 minutes on a bike shouldn't be that big of a deal for an Greco-Roman wrestler in Beijing for the Olympics. He should be in tip-top shape.
(AP)
"I had to lose a lot of weight, 3 ½ kilos by Tuesday," Dantzler, who is from Chicago, said Saturday. "We found out our scale was wrong."
Two questions: How much is 3½ kilos? And, the scale was wrong?
"About eight pounds," he said. "And what I mean is the scale the team has been using was wrong. Everybody was about a kilo wrong. Almost for the past week, we all thought our weight was something it wasn't."
The U.S. wrestling team brought a scale to the Beijing Olympics, and the scale was wrong. That's what Dantzler was saying, though a USA Wrestling official didn't return my call for confirmation. And that would be comical if it didn't risk an entire team's dreams _ what if they hadn't discovered this before official weigh-ins?
But even worse, it has led to a dangerous behavior. Dantzler said the whole team is frantically trying to cut weight to avoid disqualification.
I'm going to guess that not one U.S. wrestler will miss weight, as all will be riding bikes in the sauna, wearing rubber sweatsuits, inducing vomiting and taking laxatives.
Maybe in that order.
A few days ago, U.S. boxer Gary Russell Jr., trying to make weight, went for a late jog, wearing a vinyl sweat jacket in Beijing's oppressive heat. But he could no longer sweat. Eventually, he passed out and emergency workers, finding him with a 105 degree temperature, pumped him with fluids.
After that, still trying to lose weight, he missed the bus to weigh-ins and was disqualified.
Now, apparently, the men's wrestling team was doing it, too.
"Those boxers don't know how to do it," Dantzler said. "We know what we're doing."
He lost eight pounds on Saturday. Does that sound healthy?
Dantzler didn't name names, but said others were four kilos over, five kilos. One guy, he said, needed to lose nearly 10 percent of his body weight in two days.
"I had practice for about an hour and a half, drilling," Dantzler said. "Then I did the road bike for 30 minutes, then I rode the bike in the sauna for 30 minutes. After that, I checked my weight, and it wasn't where it needed to be; I needed to lose another kilo. So I hopped on the bike in the sauna for another 20 minutes."
You can't blame the wrestlers for a bad scale. But these guys were planning a weight-cut anyway. I mean, if the scale is off by a kilo, which is about 2.2 pounds, and Dantzler was 8 pounds overweight, then it's not all on the scale.
The idea for these boxers and wrestlers is to compete at a weight class beneath what their weight actually is. Crash the weight for weigh-in, then immediately binge back to normal to compete the next day.
I once spent a couple days with a club fighter who was getting to box against a world champ. I drove with him from Wichita, Kan. to Omaha, Neb. After cutting weight, he was so weak he couldn't spar one round a few days before the fight, if memory serves.
He wore a plastic sweatsuit on the drive, and sweat poured from the sleeve. In his hotel, still in the suit, he sat on the side of the tub, turned on the shower fully hot and let the steam make him sweat. He also chewed gum to bring up saliva he could spit out.
After making weight, he ran to a spigot for water, then he ate two dinners and, I believe, a lemon pie.
"This is what we do," Dantzler said. "Wrestlers are professionals at cutting weight. Boxers don't have it down yet, at least to the science we do."
Science.
In 1997, three college wrestlers died over a span of a couple months while doing weight-cutting workouts. Two were riding bikes in rubber sweatsuits. The NCAA changed college rules, banning several of these measures, and having weigh-ins the same day as the competition.
But this problem is still there, systemic for older athletes to teach the new ones coming in. It will be justified as being the way it's always been done.
"When these kids try to make weight, sometimes they cut corners," U.S. boxing coach Dan Campbell said to NBC after Russell was disqualified. "What we believe is he did not increase his fluid intake after we told him to."
Now, I've never met Campbell, but this sounds like first-class butt-covering. If he's trying to claim ignorance on this practice, then he's not telling the truth.
In the end, doctors might have saved Russell's life, but they killed his dreams.
This is what he told the Washington Post: "I was willing to put my life on the line to make this happen."
It's just so stupid, and unnecessary. Maybe he just didn't understand the science.