It is midnight here in Istanbul, Turkey, and it just became Sunday, September 11. The 2011 World Wrestling Championships are getting underway today with the first set of weigh-ins for the Greco-Roman competition.

It is impossible to be here as part of the U.S. delegation and not think of what happened at USA Wrestling, and much more importantly, to our world exactly 10 years ago today.

September 11, 2001 was lining up to be a busy day in American wrestling. Among the new stories on TheMat.com that day was the preview of the 130 kg division in freestyle for the 2001 World Championships in Madison Square Garden in New York City which was scheduled to start on September 26. 

It was also a day which Nebraska announced the hiring of Shawn Charles as an assistant wrestling under Mark Manning.

Suddenly that morning, the whole world changed forever with the unexpected terrorist attack on the United States, which included the crashing of highjacked airplanes into the World Trade Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington. Another highjacked plane crashed in the woods of Western Pennsylvania. For our generation, this day will forever be burned into our souls, with vivid images of the horror we all shared as a nation.

We can all tell the story of where we were that day when we heard about the attack. I was driving back from the Colorado Springs airport after buying an airline ticket. I received a call on my cell phone from my home, about seeing a plane crash into the World Trade Towers on television. I immediately put on the radio and by the time I got back to USA Wrestling’s office I knew what was going on.

Suddenly, hosting a World Championship wrestling event in the world’s most famous sports arena was no longer so important.

Rich Bender was serving in his first year as USA Wrestling’s Executive Director, and the immediate pressing question was what to do about the World Championships only a few days away. We tried unsuccessfully to reach many of those who were part of the local organizing effort to discuss what to do. As we watched the news updates and learned more about what had happened, we fully realized that hosting a World Championships was not even on the radar screen for those who lived in New York City. The citizens of New York were dealing with harsh reality of September 11 and trying to pull their city and their lives back together.

It was a rough day for me as a native New Yorker living two time zones away. My older brother is a lawyer on Wall Street who took the train from New Jersey into the World Trade Center each day. For many hours that day, nobody in my family had heard from him. Later that afternoon, we finally got a message that he had contacted his wife and was safe. Jim, a EIWA wrestling medalist for Colgate University, had gone to work early that day and was in his office when the first plane crashed. He actually had watched the second tower crash to the ground from his office window. They told him to stay in the building, but his instincts told him to go outside in all that dust and get away from there. He walked all the way up to midtown until he was away from danger, and finally found a way to get out of the city.

USA Wrestling had gotten a call from our state chairperson in New York, Ed Gould, who worked in the World Trade Towers in his job with the Port Authority. Ed was working high up in that tower when the first plane struck, and somehow got to a staircase and walked down the stairs to safety.

My phone began ringing from sports reporters, seeking a story about anybody from our sport who had witnessed the attack in New York. Ed was willing to tell his story, and he spoke with a few reporters. His survival story was told in the sports section of USA Today the following morning.

As the day went on, and for many days to come, USA Wrestling’s FAX machine and email box began to be filled with messages of condolence and support from our wrestling family from around the world. We heard from the international federations. We heard from wrestling journalists. We heard from FILA. We posted a statement from the International Olympic Committee about the tragedy.

One of my jobs starting that day was to pull those messages together and share them with the American wrestling community. It was unbelievably emotional to read these letters from people around the world who just wanted USA Wrestling to know that they cared about us and were concerned for our entire nation. I still get choked up thinking about it. In this column, I will share those messages with you again, which we posted on TheMat.com for all to read at that time.

Messages of condolences to USA Wrestling from FILA & international wrestling federations

Messages of condolences to USA Wrestling from international journalists

The rest of that day remains a blur to me. Like everybody else around the world, I watched the video from New York City and Washington, D.C. many times. We all mourned the loss of those who died that day, the innocent victims and the brave public servants who were doing their duty for us all at Ground Zero. 

Because of the World Championships, we had to reach out and let people know what was going on, and on September 12, we posted our first official statement from USA Wrestling, basically explaining that we had no information to share yet about the event.

USA Wrestling Statement on September 12

As things turned out, the World Wrestling Championships were not held in New York that year. USA Wrestling formally made a request to postpone the event, and FILA accepted that request and announced that they would be postponed shortly after. The stories published about those decisions follow.

USA Wrestling requests a postponement of 2001 World Championships of Wrestling

FILA announces postponement of 2001 World Championships of Wrestling

Within a few days, so many stories came out about the details on September 11, and I was able to pull together a feature article about two heroes from the wrestling community who gave their lives on that day. Chief Raymond Downey died at Ground Zero leading the rescue effort. Jeremy Glick died on that plane which went down in Pennsylvania, and he was one of the leaders who fought against the highjackers and helped bring down Flight 83. Here is our story about them from September 18.

Remembering heroes Raymond Downey and Jeremy Glick

As it turned out, FILA moved the World Championships to other locations, with the 2001 World Greco-Roman Championships held in Greece and the 2001 World Freestyle Championships for men and women held in Bulgaria. Rulon Gardner won a Greco-Roman World title in Greece in the relocated championships.

The story continues in 2003, when New York City finally got a chance to host the World Freestyle Wrestling Championships in Madison Square Garden. It was a testament to so many wrestling leaders in New York and across the United States, led by Set Agonian and others, who would not quit until we had the chance to host the World Championships which had been taken away along with so much more by the terrorists on September 11.

We are here in Istanbul thinking about everybody back in the United States who will be going through the 10th anniversary of 9-11 back home. Know that you are all in our thoughts today.