Greco-Roman Olympic Games Session 3 quotes
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John Fuller (USA Wrestling)
08/25/2004
60 kg/132 lbs. - Jim Gruenwald, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids) Did you panic at all? "You can't panic here. If you start panicking, then you start doing really dumb things. It's bad enough to be down 7-0. You've got to stick to your gameplan. If you don't stick to what you have the plan for that's when mistakes happen. It cost me seven points. Fortunately, I was able to, for whatever reason, get it back." Do you expect to win a medal? "The only thing I can do is go out and do my best. If my best brings me home a medal, praise God. If my best doesn't bring me home a medal, then I can walk off the mat having wrestled at this level for well over a decade with no shame whatsoever." 96 kg/211.5 lbs. - Garrett Lowney, Freedom, Wis. (Minnesota Storm) Do you think you should have been awarded the points at the end? "I watched replay on the big screen and I don't know where they got those last two points. It was a bullsh*t call. I've been wrestling for how long and I still don't know where they pulled those two points out of. I thought I was going to get that. I am completely dumfounded." How disappointing is this? "I wrestled a terrible match my first match. I wasn't ready. To train for four years and make that much of a sacrifice, to come out and not perform my best, to perform poorly at that, my first match was very disappointing. But this last match, I don't know where it came from. I don't know what happened." Take us through the match again. "The two clinches, he was in the driver's seat just because I had to lock first which means I had to score. He can sit and hang out as long as he wants. That's what he was doing and I had to make attempts on both of those. I almost got the one, but I lost both of those points. That's part of the match. But the match wasn't over. The match was far from over. It was some phantom two points that ended the match." 120 kg/264.5 lbs. - Rulon Gardner, Cascade, Colo. (Sunkist Kids) How prepared were you for his move in the clinch? "In the clinch, it's making moves up as you go. There's no set move. You just go out and feel what the guys does and go for it. Nobody in America, besides Paul Devlin, has his body type." How will you recover for the bronze medal match? "This is wrestling. I'm ready to go tonight. I warmed up with (the Iranian) yesterday. He's 6'6", 6'7" or whatever. He has a wingspan of how many feet. He'll grab you from here or there and he's just as good in the clinch as the Kazakhstan guy. This is my last match one way or the other, so I'm going to give 100 percent." Did you think about being more conservative? "I could have gave up the point and tried to play from behind and tried to come back being down 2-1 and try to get a second point. But you always want to try to get ahead. You always want to show that you have good technique. I feel I'm one of the better clinch guys in the world. But this match, he got a good lock and he forced me to lock and scored that point in the second clinch. Three points make the whole difference in the world."