Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold (10 page)

My comment, predictably, created a firestorm. Alumni started calling Coach Abel to ask what was going on under his watch, and some were telling him they were going to stop donating money to his program.

Coach dragged me into his office the next day. “What the hell is wrong with you?! Is that the way you want it?!”

I was so into not displaying any weakness—and I also was a little ticked at him because I wrongly thought he was neglecting me—that I responded, “Yeah.”

Our relationship grew cold instantly. I rarely talked to Coach after that.

My attitude and wrestling started going downhill. I began sporadically showing up in the wrestling room. I went back home to Oregon over Christmas and missed the Midlands tournament and three duals. My biggest threat to winning the national championship—at least as far as other wrestlers went—was Duane Goldman of Iowa. Goldman was a freshman, so we hadn’t wrestled each other before, and I didn’t want him to have any idea what to expect from me until we met in the NCAAs, if that was to be the case.

The team didn’t matter to me. I was out for myself and felt that I was protecting my title, not fighting for another one. In my mind, I had nothing to gain and everything—and I mean everything—to lose.

I won the Big 8 championship in qualifying for my fourth NCAA tournament, in Oklahoma City that year. I came down with strep throat just as the tournament started. A media photographer took a picture of me warming up with my tongue sticking out, and my tongue was white, it was so dry.

I struggled in my first-round match, defeating unseeded Scott Giacobbe of Old Dominion University 8–5. In the second round, I faced number-twelve seed Bob Harr of Penn State. In the first round, I got him in the Schultz front headlock and choked him out, turned him over, and pinned him. But the refs only gave me a takedown. Harr woke up mad and spent the rest of the match attacking like crazy. I beat him 11–6 but had to deal with a pissed-off wrestler the entire match. The third round produced my only “easy” win, with a 15–4 defeat of unseeded Jeff Turner from Lehigh University.

I drew Ohio State’s Ed Potokar in the semifinals. I was 25-0 that season with my reduced schedule. Ed had broken the Ohio State record for victories in a season with his 49-1 record. Winning our semifinal match would have given him fifty wins.

I led Potokar 4–2 in the third period, and both of his points had come for my being penalized for stalling by referee Pat Lovell. I was on top of Potokar with sixteen seconds to go and all I had to do was ride him out and I would be in the finals. But then Lovell hit me with
another
stalling call, giving Ed two points and tying the score at 4.

Lovell had been a heavyweight wrestler before becoming a ref. He was from the San Francisco Bay Area, like me, and we were friends. We’d even had lunch together at his home. Now I’ll never forget Pat because of that last stalling call that tied the match. I’m not saying his call was wrong; I’m just saying I’ll never forget it.

Pat’s call stopped the match so we could go back to the center of the mat. Potokar was jumping up and down, superpumped. I, on the other hand, was almost scared out of my mind. We were tied and my opponent had yet to score a technical point. If Potokar
managed to pull off an escape from the bottom, he would beat me 5–4 and my senior year and my life would be ruined.

When Pat blew the whistle to resume the match, Potokar exploded from the bottom. He was riding all the momentum of the late call that had tied the match. I was riding a bucking bronco.

Finally, Potokar stood up, broke my grip, and spun behind me. But right before the ref could call a two-point reversal, I did something I had never done: I squatted like a frog and dove straight backward, like a back dive off a diving board, hoping to grab hold of something. I hooked a finger into the loop of Potokar’s shoelace, clawed my way up his leg, and held on like my life depended on maintaining that grip. The final seconds ticked off the clock and we went into overtime.

Potokar still couldn’t manage a technical point in overtime, and with no stalling calls against me, I outscored him 6–0 in overtime to advance.

—

G
oldman, the second seed and freshman sensation, defeated Perry Hummel in the other semifinal. Thanks to my Christmas in Oregon, I hadn’t wrestled against Goldman, and that gave me an advantage going into the finals, in my opinion. The more often wrestlers face each other, the closer their matches tend to become. If I had wrestled Goldman previously, I think a certain amount of my aura could have been diminished merely by his getting onto the mat with me.

Maybe he wasn’t thinking that way, but I was, and it gave me a psychological boost going back to the hotel the eve of our final.

Frankly, I needed every edge I could get because a memory of
the NCAAs from my freshman year at UCLA kept haunting me. Mike Land was a senior at Iowa State and a defending national champion. In the 1979 finals, he faced a freshman from Lehigh named Darryl Burley. Land had won eighty-four consecutive matches, but in his last time on the mat in college, he lost to the freshman.

Now here I was, the senior defending champion everyone expected to win going up against a freshman in the finals.

So much for a good night’s sleep.

A couple of hours before the finals started, I was sitting in my hotel room with Clinton Burke, our 134-pounder and the only other Sooner who would be wrestling for a championship. There was a knock on the door and Clinton opened it. We were only a half hour’s drive from Norman, and all these friends of Clinton’s came streaming into our room, laughing and drinking and smoking.

I’m sitting there on my bed thinking,
These people are going to kill us mentally
.

It was
way
too early to celebrate. Or be happy even. Being happy could ruin my mental state as I prepared for the match. Clinton seemed to have no intention of asking his friends to leave, so I grabbed my gear and headed to the arena much earlier than I had wanted to.

The commentator from
Wide World of Sports
was going around interviewing all the finalists at the arena. For me, that was no time to be talking. I gave one-word answers to his first three questions. Visibly frustrated, he said, “This is impossible. I can’t do it.” I got up and walked away to be by myself, just as I preferred.

Right before the first final, Clinton seemed to realize the enormity of wrestling in the finals. I could see him in the corner of the
warm-up room looking all emotional. I wasn’t sure, but it looked as though he was crying. Andre walked over to Clinton and told him he had to snap out of it. I couldn’t be a part of that scene and stayed away from them. Clinton lost his match by two points. That left me as OU’s only hope for a championship in 1983.

Coach Abel and Coach Humphrey had warned me about stalling. They said the refs thought I had been stalling too much in the tournament and had met and decided to show me no mercy in the finals. Then in the final moments before my match, Dave told me that the refs were going to be watching me very closely for stalling and wouldn’t cut me any slack.

Jeez, did anyone else in the arena want to warn me about stalling?

From the moment Goldman and I met on the mat, I could sense he had already decided I was supposed to win. It’s difficult to put into words, but there was something in his eyes and body language that gave it away.

Goldman’s escape attempts seemed halfhearted, and he was easier to hold down than anyone I had beaten coming through the bracket. My only concern came from all those stalling warnings. I was called three times—the first as a warning and the next two for one point each. I didn’t think Goldman would score on me otherwise, but locked in a close match and knowing the refs were paying extra attention to me, I was worried that a repeat of the semifinals match against Potokar would happen. It didn’t, though, and with four minutes of riding time, I won 4–2 and for the third consecutive year defeated an Iowa Hawkeye to win the NCAA championship.

One year after taking part in one of the most exciting matches
in college wrestling history, I had just won the most boring match of that year’s finals. But I didn’t care, because I had won. I had pulled off my biggest escape as a wrestler—the escape from the pressure and expectations that had weighed heavily on my chest for a full year.

I stood there with my arms outstretched like a bird. I finally felt released, unlatched from my burdens, free to fly away and leave behind all the junk that had accumulated to make my senior season pure hell.

Then I did something I’d done rarely during the season: I smiled.

I thanked God repeatedly.

Before taking the mat and winning my second championship, I had prayed that God would take my life if I lost. Now, one year later, and only six years after taking up the sport of wrestling, I stood there, soaking in the glory of being cheered as a three-time NCAA champion.

God could have taken my life right then and there, too, if he wanted and I would have died a happy person. There hadn’t been many times in my life when I could have said
that.

T
here’s that old expression about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Why doesn’t anyone talk about what happens when you exit the tunnel?

My senior year had been my tunnel, and to help make it through, I had kept telling myself that there was a light at the end. If I came out on the other end with that third NCAA championship in hand, I thought I would retire and be happy the rest of my life. I would have been content with calling my senior year the final chapter and sending that book off to the printer.

But Dave had other plans for us.

Dave had won his championship as a senior and had earned All-American status all three seasons he was able to compete. But he didn’t care too much for collegiate wrestling. He was better at freestyle wrestling. Collegiate, or folkstyle, wrestling required more of a control-oriented, grinding style. It favored super-conditioned athletes with strong upper bodies that allowed them to hold opponents on their back for near fall points and to accumulate riding time. Also, the option of the down position benefited wrestlers who could ride and escape.

Freestyle, however, did not have the down position or points for escapes and riding time. Freestyle featured more wrestling on your feet and favored wrestlers who were better at takedowns,
throws, and turns. Dave was one of the best in the world at all three. Dave won eight freestyle national championships (plus two Greco-Roman) and was named the nation’s top freestyle wrestler four times. Dave’s body and wrestling style perfectly suited freestyle.

Dave tried to talk me into competing at the US Open, but I was so burned out from my senior season that I had no desire to go. At that point, I couldn’t imagine putting my body and mind through another competition, but Dave wouldn’t stop bugging me. He was not going to let me quit wrestling and convinced me to go with him that summer to try out in Iowa City for the United States’ Worlds team. I went, not sure it was what I wanted to be doing, and we both made the team, with me defeating Duane Goldman again for my spot.

Dave and I graduated from Oklahoma with degrees in exercise science. I don’t know how it is in most colleges now, but back then exercise science was a more academic way of saying PE. I used to joke that I actually was majoring in eligibility.

If we had gone the astrophysics route and had to study a lot more, we wouldn’t have become nearly as good as wrestlers as we did. But wrestling, not education, was the reason we were at Oklahoma. Although jobs in astrophysics would have paid more after college.

Former college wrestlers who wanted to compete in freestyle had few options. The common route was to try to find an assistant coach’s position at a college that would pay you poorly but at least give you a place to work out and provide wrestlers to work out against.

No such opportunity existed at Oklahoma. Coach Abel wouldn’t hire us because he said we weren’t team players. He was correct, at least in my case. My interview with the TV station didn’t help our job prospects, either.

We did, however, receive an offer from Chris Horpel to coach with him at Stanford.

I had no ties to Oklahoma, and certainly no reason to stay. I gave the other wrestlers everything I possessed except for the clothes I could fit into one bag, hopped on my Honda 400 motorcycle, and split.

About half a mile west of Oklahoma City, I pulled over to the side of Interstate 40, shut off my bike, stepped off, and looked back toward the city skyline. I stood there for about twenty minutes reflecting on my time in that state, about my commitment to sacrifice my life there if that’s what it would take to make it there. Dying trying would have been more acceptable than failing.

Do or die, right?

Four years later, I was still standing, winner of the national championship all three years I competed. I had won my final forty-four matches as a Sooner. By going 27-0 my last season in crimson and cream, I had broken the school record for most wins in an undefeated season, a record that stood for seventeen years. I had never lost a match at home and had avenged all my losses against my greatest opponents.

Satisfied that all my demons had been exorcised, I got back on my bike and headed home.

—

D
ave and I were able to find a home owner who rented us rooms for a great price: our dad, who rented out rooms/apartments in his house. Dave and his wife took one room upstairs, and I had another. It was great to be back under the same roof as my brother.

The same living arrangements didn’t go well when officials with the Amateur Athletic Union, which was nearing its end as the governing body of US wrestling, put me in the same hotel room as Dave and his wife at the 1983 World Championships in Kiev, Russia.

I’d had to get out when Clinton’s friends crashed our hotel room the morning of the NCAAs a few months earlier, but I didn’t have that option for the long stay in Kiev. I needed to be in my own room or in a room with a wrestler who didn’t have his wife or girlfriend with him. This was the
World
Championships and we were the
United States of America
, not some piddling little country that was just happy to be there. I would have paid for my own room for the whole trip if I had had the money.

I needed a quiet room. I needed a room that I could make completely dark and where I could lie on a bed before each match and conserve energy to prepare for battle. I needed a room where I could get lots of rest between matches.

I wasn’t given what I needed.

The eventual World Champion, Taymuraz Dzgoev of the Soviet Union, beat me by two measly points. I had a 2-2 record in Kiev and placed seventh.

Depressed over losing, I wondered if I would ever have another chance at a world title. I was just beginning freestyle and couldn’t assume I would make another World or Olympic team.

Dave reached the finals of his weight and was trailing Taram Magomadov 4–0 early. For the first part of the match, I wanted Dave to lose, as though our hotel arrangements were his fault. But during his match, something in me snapped and I did a complete reversal. I knew Dave was better than his Russian opponent, and I jumped out of my chair, ran to the edge of the mat, and screamed at Dave, “Kill him!” Perhaps it was coincidence that this happened, but at that exact moment, the momentum of the match turned in Dave’s favor and he launched a comeback to win 7–4.

I was happy for Dave but miserable that I had lost. I told Dave afterward that it wasn’t fair for me to be put in his and his wife’s room. I was mad, down, and feeling a little betrayed.

—

E
ven though Horpel hired Dave and me, I never understood Horpel’s take on me. I had a strong impression that he aspired to make me inferior to Dave. After the ’83 Worlds, I sensed Chris looked down on me as “Dave’s less successful little brother.” I didn’t get it. I was a
three-
time NCAA champ. Dave had won once. But Dave was a World Champion, and Chris apparently put more stock in that because he would introduce Dave to people as a world champ but would say nothing about my college titles.

One time, our Stanford team went to Washington for a tournament. We were at a Stanford alum’s house playing pool, and I missed an easy shot. Chris made some remark that ended with his calling me a has-been Chris hadn’t won an NCAA championship, so I quickly shot back, “I’d rather be a has-been than a never-been.”

Perhaps Horpel was trying to motivate me. I don’t know. I just tried not to think about what I perceived as to how he treated me. I didn’t want to let anyone get to me with their actions or words. “Forgive everyone of their sins” was my philosophy. Not for their sake, necessarily, but because I didn’t want to get weighed down with any burdens I didn’t have to carry. Simply competing supplied enough burdens of its own.

The next year, we went to the US Open in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Dave and I both won national freestyle titles. I was driving the rental car back to the Oklahoma City airport. Horpel was in the passenger seat, and Dave was in the back.

“So,” Chris said to me, “how does it feel to win the national championship?”

I was about to say, “Relieved,” but before I could answer, the question entered my mind,
What is Chris expecting me to say?

Did Chris think I would say I was happy? Heck yeah, I was happy. But if I told Chris that, he might think I wasn’t expecting to win. If I’m not expecting to win, I’m not competing in the tournament. I went to the US Open to win. Dave was my main workout partner in the Stanford room. Pound for pound he was the greatest wrestler in the world, and we were pretty even in the room at that point. It shouldn’t have been a surprise I had won. I wasn’t surprised. Losing would have surprised me, because I fully expected to win. Then it came to me how I should answer Chris’s question.

How did it feel?

“Natural.”

Chris only laughed. The expression on his face indicated he hadn’t expected me to say that, so I guess that was the best answer after all.

—

B
ack in our day, qualifying for the US Olympic team was a more difficult process than in recent years. I would need to wrestle in thirteen matches to make the team. We had to qualify for the qualifying tournament, as odd as that sounds. The US Open counted as a qualifying tournament, and that’s where Dave and I earned the right to compete in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament. We both won there. The award presented to the top six placers in each of the weight classes was a tiny block of wood with the word
Participant
on it. That was my big prize for winning one of the toughest national tournaments of my life.

Modest award aside, winning placed Dave and me on top of the ladder for the Olympic Team Trials, which would decide who would represent the United States at the ’84 Olympics in Los Angeles. In the ladder system, the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-seeded wrestlers took part in a minitournament to determine who would fill the fourth spot. That person wrestled the third seed best-two-out-of-three for the right to take on the second seed in a best-of-three. As the top seed, I, like Dave, was able to wait for the survivor of those preliminary matches, and then wrestle best-of-three for the spot on the Olympic team.

In Dave’s class, three-time world champ Lee Kemp advanced to the final. Dave swept him in two matches. That gave Dave wins against Kemp in the US Open and the qualifying tournament, all within a year of each other. I can’t say that I was surprised, because Dave was that good in freestyle, but it was an impressive feat.

My opponent in the finals was Don Shuler. That was a
rematch also, as I had beaten Don in the finals of the Open and the qualifier. I won the first match 7–2. Then Don beat me by the same score. In the third, and deciding, match, I won 4–2, earning a spot on the US Olympic team with my brother.

In May, three months before the Olympics, Soviet Union officials announced a boycott of the Games in Los Angeles. Thirteen other Eastern Bloc countries joined the boycott over the next several days. The Soviets cited concerns over inadequate security for its athletes in the United States.

Everybody in the world knew the Soviets’ real reason was retaliation for President Jimmy Carter’s decision to have the United States lead a sixty-two-nation boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Wrestling figured to be one of the sports most affected, because the Russians and Bulgarians, who also chose not to come to Los Angeles, perennially fielded powerful wrestling teams.

Our sport is one of those that some sports fans pay attention to only every four years when the Olympics roll around. Because of the boycott, public sentiment was that the US team should clean up in freestyle. But what most didn’t realize was that while the boycott certainly diminished the level of competition in general, that wasn’t the case across the board.

My and Dave’s weights, plus Barry Davis’s at 125.5, still had worthy fields. Barry’s class included two-time World Champion Hideaki Tomiyama of Japan. The only weight that I thought was more stacked than Barry’s was Dave’s at 163. He would have to contend with Martin Knosp, the 1981 world champ from West Germany. Dave’s weight was as legit as in any other Olympics. My class,
180.5, included the reigning European champion, Reşit Karabacak of Turkey. The European Championship included the countries that boycotted the Olympics. I had my weight ranked as third toughest.

The depth might not have been that of a typical Olympics, but those three weights were still stout at the top. Despite the disparity in level of competition between the ten weight classes, expectations of American victories were the same across the classifications.

As far as I was concerned, the drop-off in talent for my weight because of the boycott was minimal, but the pressure to win had been ratcheted up three or four notches. There certainly were no guarantees with Karabacak in my class, but losing in the ’84 Olympics would have been more humiliating than losing in any other Olympics.

A problem at the Olympic training camp complicated matters for me. I had asked my girlfriend, Terry, to join me there. Things were going well at first, and having her there had a calming effect on me. Terry was, to be blunt about it, hot. Really hot. She was so stunningly gorgeous that the other guys would go gaga over her. Apparently, some of the wrestlers’ wives didn’t like Terry being there and complained to the administrators of USA Wrestling, which had become the governing body of US wrestling. The wives contended that only wives, not fiancées and girlfriends, should be permitted at training camp.

The administrators assembled an informal meeting with the wrestlers, wives, and coaches about whether Terry should be permitted to stay. Dan Gable, our head coach, started the meeting by telling me, “There have been complaints that you and Terry are not married.”

Who cares?
I thought.

“We have determined that if you and Terry aren’t married,” Dan continued, “she has to leave.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “We’re married.”

“That’s it then,” Gable replied.