Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold (13 page)

We had to train year-round to be competitive on the international stage, while teams like the Russians were fully financially supported by their government. We were competing against, essentially, “professional amateurs.” Yet there were not many decent-paying jobs that could give us the flexible schedule we needed. It was either make a living or keep competing. Doing both was not an option.

That’s why so many of us took low-paying jobs as assistant coaches in colleges. Others took volunteer coaching positions so they could at least train and then found some other way to get by. It felt like when we did manage to win, despite USA Wrestling’s lack of support, the administrators showed up to take credit for whatever they could and then they went back to their comfortable lives while we went back to our low-paying jobs and small apartments.

After Nationals, I returned to Palo Alto to begin training for the ’86 Worlds. That’s when I met a guy who wanted to be my manager. He invited me to visit with him, and he had the largest office in the largest building in Palo Alto. I told him how I was trying to promote myself and make more money so I could continue competing.

“That’s what I do,” he told me. “You ought to let me do it for you.”

He said he was worth millions and would promote me for 50 percent of everything he made for me.

I figured it was worth a shot. I needed money, and although 50 percent was a big cut, I was willing to give up half of whatever someone else could bring in for me because I didn’t think I could bring in anything for myself. I didn’t have time to try to market and promote myself while training. I had to keep winning to be marketable, but I couldn’t make myself marketable and continue winning. I needed someone to manage me, and I didn’t have anybody who could. Plus, if the guy didn’t make any money for me, I figured, half of zero was zero.

The guy turned out to be a crook. He didn’t bring in one penny for me, but he wanted money from me anyway. When I told him I was done with him, he said I owed him 50 percent of what I had made from my clinics, even though he had done absolutely no work related to them. When I told him what I thought of his demand, he threatened to sue me. I had to pay for a lawyer so I wouldn’t have to give that bum anything. Hiring a lawyer didn’t help my finances any.

I was wrestling great, at a real high point in my career with Olympic and World championships in successive years. But being fired had not only left me feeling insulted, it had also thrown me into financial desperation. I lost my health insurance when I lost my job. I was used to wrestling without insurance, but I had never liked it. Without income, I was one freak injury in a violent sport from being wiped out financially.

USA Wrestling was not supporting me. There was no athlete residency program, as there is now, that would allow me to live and train at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. My
only option was to train at Stanford and live off the money I’d made doing the clinics. But dealing legally with my “manager” had cut into my savings, and I didn’t know how much longer I could go without finding some source of income.

I was looking for anything I could do to remove some of the financial pressure so I could train undistracted. My desperation made me an easy target.

T
here wasn’t much privacy in the apartment I rented in my dad’s house. My apartment on the second floor was more like a hallway. There were stairs at the back of house, but it was easier for Dave, Nancy, and whoever was renting out the third upstairs room at the time to go back and forth from downstairs and their apartments by walking through my room than to use the stairs and walk outside around to the front.

Sharing upstairs with others and having them passing through my apartment made getting good sleep difficult. But rent was high in the Palo Alto area, and Dad gave us a break on the rent even though I didn’t want charity. I tried twice to have a roommate to split rent with me, but that took away even more of the little privacy I did have. Without a roommate, most of my low salary went to paying my rent of $550 a month and taxes, leaving not much money for food. As much as I loved being in the same house as my dad and Dave, my living conditions were uncomfortable.

Between the US Open and the World Team Trials, I was in my apartment waiting for practice when I received a phone call from someone identifying himself as a chief surgeon for something at Stanford University Medical Center. He told me that I would be receiving a phone call from a man named John du Pont. He told
me that du Pont was a bigwig heavy hitter, and he wanted to vouch for du Pont before we talked.

I had never heard of this du Pont guy before and the doctor didn’t give me a hint what he wanted with me.

I was curious why the guy had called and why a chief surgeon would need to vouch for du Pont. I wondered if something was wrong or off with du Pont. What made the call stranger was that the surgeon didn’t come across as comfortable calling me. But I figured,
What the hell? I don’t have anything else going for me.

Later that afternoon, du Pont called and introduced himself as starting an NCAA Division I wrestling program from scratch at Villanova University outside Philadelphia, and he wanted to talk to me about coming there as an assistant coach.

“How much would it take to bring you here?” he asked.

The figure $24,000 was in my head. If I had known then what I would soon learn about du Pont, I would have said $300,000, and he probably would have said okay. But $24,000 would have been more than Dave was making at Stanford even after having my salary added to his, and I wasn’t looking for anything more than an average assistant’s job in a stable environment. So that was the amount I gave du Pont.

Du Pont said he would get back to me.

It turned out that du Pont had first called Dave. Dave had that reputation as one of the greatest technicians and greatest wrestlers in the world, and he was well-liked. Dave knew how to be true to himself while still saying and doing the right things that would help him climb the ladder of USA Wrestling. Dave had the ability to be honest while not offending the powers that be. When Dave spoke, even if he was offering criticism, his sincerity couldn’t be questioned.

Unlike me, with my preference to stay alone and not share my secrets, Dave gave his time to everybody. If kids asked him to show them moves, he would. I would spend time with kids, too, and show them basic moves, but Dave was better at all that than me. Plus, because he had been wrestling longer, he had more moves to share. In my mind, I hadn’t stockpiled enough moves to be giving any away.

Because of Dave’s friendliness and willingness to share, he became highly thought of throughout the wrestling community in the United States and around the world. He enjoyed volunteering his time to speak to school classes, especially his kids’, about his Olympic experiences. He thought nothing of giving his medals and trophies to family members and friends as gifts. When other wrestlers asked Dave to show them some of his moves, he gladly and unselfishly taught them. Dave loved people and gave of his time freely, and time is the most valuable thing we have to give others. Overseas, learning to speak Russian had earned Dave the respect of Russian wrestlers and endeared him to Russian fans. Dave was probably more recognized and appreciated in Europe than in our country.

Dave’s name came to du Pont’s mind when he decided to build a program at Villanova. But Dave had just accepted his raise from my salary and that pretty well locked him in at Stanford for at least the next year. Dave gave du Pont my name, though.

After our first conversation, du Pont called the next day and said he could pay me the salary I had requested.

I wanted more information from him, though. Schools were eliminating wrestling programs, not adding them.

Du Pont was vague in his answers, causing me to determine
he didn’t know everything he needed to know to start a program. But nothing he said surprised me or made me think he had a questionable motive.

I wanted to get more of a feel for du Pont, though, and had him call me over the next few days so I could try to get a better gauge on him.

As I learned that he was a big-hitting millionaire, I liked the idea that someone with that kind of money was coming into the sport. Art Martori had started the Sunkist Kids Wrestling Club, and I had wrestled for him, but Art had mostly paid for expenses for his wrestlers to compete. His club provided little backing for actual training and living costs. Based on what du Pont led me to believe, although speaking mostly in vague terms, I thought he was going to become the first multijillionaire who would come into the sport with a commitment to compete at the highest level regardless of cost.

Over our next couple of phone conversations, though, I got a feeling that he was hiding something. He didn’t seem forthcoming with information, and I could not figure out why. That made me cautious, but again, nothing came up in our talks that was a red flag on the guy.

In fact, the more we talked, the more I got the sense that he increasingly liked the idea of my coaching at Villanova. However, I wasn’t becoming more and more interested in going to Villanova. I kept having this thought that there was something a little off about du Pont, but I couldn’t quite identify it over the phone.

But still, he had money—lots and lots and lots of money—and seemed seriously interested in wrestling. With du Pont’s financial backing, I thought Villanova was on the verge of building the next
East Coast college wrestling dynasty. And if I could make more than twice the money I had made at Stanford while being able to train in a stable environment, then du Pont’s money could provide the means for me to accomplish what I wanted in my wrestling career. I told him we could meet two weeks later at the World Team Trials in Indiana if he wanted. He said he would meet me there.

To cut weight for the trials, I was running around the University of Indiana track when another wrestler, Rob Calabrese, caught up to me. Rob lived in Media, Pennsylvania, about ten miles from du Pont’s estate. I asked Rob what he thought about du Pont and Villanova starting a program, and he called it “an unbelievable situation” and “an incredible opportunity.”

A guy named Chuck Yarnall, a young wrestling coach at the private school du Pont had attended near Philadelphia, took me to meet du Pont at his hotel. Walking toward du Pont’s room, I was expecting that I would be able to get a quick read on him once I saw him in person. As long as he wasn’t too much of a loser, I assumed, I would be fine.

When Yarnall opened the door, I stared at a loser. Du Pont, in his late forties, was sitting in a chair, looking like Richie Rich all grown up and hooked on drugs. My gut reaction was a feeling of revulsion. Du Pont looked like a spoiled rich kid. I had lived with delayed gratification for so long that it was revolting to see the personification of the opposite of everything I was and believed to be true. I could tell right away that du Pont and I weren’t just different from each other; we were complete opposites.

Du Pont’s hair was the first thing I noticed about him physically. It looked as if he had borrowed Ronald McDonald’s bottle of hair color to dye his hair but hadn’t maintained it. Gray roots
extended about an inch from his scalp before the bright red took over. His hair was parted in the middle and dandruff was plastered on his head along the part. Not regular dandruff, but thick, thick dandruff. It looked as though he hadn’t washed his hair in months.

He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and he had one leg wrapped or in a cast from what I think was a knee surgery, with a black sock and a tennis shoe on the other foot. Thick varicose veins popped out from his bare leg. I wondered why a millionaire hadn’t had those taken care of. If I’d had his money, I would have looked like Mark Harmon. (Remember, this was 1986.) Du Pont was thin, with twigs for arms. But his belly looked as if he had swallowed a basketball.

Then when we were introduced and he smiled, du Pont’s teeth were dark yellow and caked with food. I wanted to ask him if he had looked in a mirror recently.

Some kind of drink sat on the table next to him, and when he started to talk, he obviously was either drunk or stoned off his ass. He babbled in a slurred voice. I had trouble making out what he was saying, except when he called me “pal.” Over and over. As he kept talking, he would interrupt himself to ask, “You understand what I’m saying?” I didn’t.

I was correct—I was able to get a quick read on du Pont, and I could not have walked into that room and met a bigger loser if I had designed one based on the worst characteristics of the worst people I’d met. I had met and been around quirky people before, but none like du Pont. The guy didn’t even attempt to look clean and sober to meet me. Du Pont’s appearance and actions were, simply, odd. He seemed harmless but seriously, seriously off.

I knew right then and there that the one question I needed to
get answered would be how involved he would be in Villanova’s program. If he was going to fund the program and I wouldn’t have to see him or talk to him, no problem. But if he was going to be anywhere near the wrestling room, this job interview was done.

“What will your position be at Villanova?” I asked.

His answer wasn’t very specific. He said he might come into the office every once in a while to see how things were going or if we needed anything, but other than that he was going to be referred to in the media guide as simply “Coach.” Not “Head Coach,” not “Assistant Coach.” Just “Coach.”

My gut was telling me to walk away. But the potential benefits seemed great. And what risk was there? If for whatever reason Villanova didn’t work out, I could just walk away. I didn’t have any better options at the time, that was for sure.

I should have trusted my gut. Or had du Pont write on a signed sheet of paper what his role would be. Instead, I told him I was interested and would talk with him again after the trials.

—

I
defeated two-time NCAA champion Mike Sheets in two straight matches to make the ’86 World Team. With a few weeks until the World Championships, I made arrangements to travel to Philadelphia for a firsthand look at the Villanova job.

John’s helicopter pilot, a Vietnam veteran named Larry Shemley, met me at the airport. Waiting for my baggage to drop onto the carousel, Larry and I had a pleasant conversation. I liked Larry, and with his being a vet, he had my immediate respect. I asked Larry about the program du Pont was creating.

“I think you’ll like it,” Larry said.

Larry gave me an aerial tour of historical sites like Valley Forge and Gettysburg. If the tour was designed to impress the hell out of me, it worked.

I had no knowledge of the estate where du Pont lived. We were flying in the helicopter over the city of Philadelphia with all these houses snapped snugly together. Then everything opened up into what looked like a national park. Right in the middle was the mansion that was the centerpiece of the estate, with several other buildings on the estate that turned out to be other homes.

The mansion looked as if it had three stories, because the basement level was visible from ground level and the entrance to the first floor stood at the top of about twenty stairs or so. The landscaping was immaculate, thanks, I later learned, to a team of landscapers who worked around the clock to maintain the property.

If he lives here,
I thought as Larry lowered us toward the helipad,
we can do anything we want at Villanova. We can dominate the NCAAs in five years.

My optimism and energy were off the charts. I had finally found the brass ring!

John met me outside and took me over to Villanova. The wrestling room was in the Butler Annex, and the space was larger than any I had ever seen for a wrestling team. John said we would have to share it with the baseball team initially, but that it would soon be exclusively ours. He had it all planned out, with offices overlooking the mats. One of the offices would be mine. At Stanford, I not only didn’t have an office, I also didn’t have a desk or a phone.

“How long until the room is ours?” I asked.

Du Pont responded with another vague answer, then added
that because he had donated a bunch of money to the school, it probably would happen before the season started or soon thereafter. I took that to mean October or November.

That was the year after Villanova’s men’s basketball team, coached by Rollie Massimino, had stunned Georgetown in the finals to win the 1985 NCAA National Championship. Du Pont walked me over to the basketball arena, named John E. du Pont Pavilion. His name was in big letters on the front of the building. Then we stopped by the school’s swimming complex, which was also named for him.

Holy crap,
I thought.
This guy must have more money than God.

Compared to two buildings bearing his name, giving the old annex to the wrestling program seemed like nothing. John made it sound like having a wrestling-only space was merely an administrative detail awaiting final approval.

The job had tremendous potential. Du Pont was willing to pay me what I considered good money for an assistant wrestling coach. He said he’d pretty much stay out of the way. And, having competed uninsured in the Olympics and World Championships, I would have health insurance again. I also could recruit my own workout partners. Although I wouldn’t be with Dave, I could round up some tough guys to make me a better wrestler.