Sweatin' to the Olys: Gardner, Sanderson headed to Athens

INDIANAPOLIS -- Rulon Gardner walked off the mat Sunday at the U.S. Olympic wrestling trials with an unmistakable look of determination on his face and his shoes still firmly on his feet.

Gardner, who promised to leave his shoes on the mat in the wrestler's traditional show of retirement if he lost, won a pair of tight 2-1 overtime decisions over top-seeded Dremiel Byers to gain the return trip to the Olympics that once seemed a long shot.

"I told myself, 'I'm not putting those shoes out there today,' " said Gardner, the 2000 Greco-Roman super heavyweight gold medalist at the Sydney Games. "I have more matches to wrestle."

While Gardner successfully wrestled out of the challenge tournament that determined who would meet the U.S. national champions in Sunday's best-of-three trials, only four others did -- including the other American big name, four-time NCAA champion Cael Sanderson.

Sanderson of Heber City, Utah, needed three matches to outlast former Iowa college rival Lee Fullhart at 185 pounds, winning 3-1 and 4-1 in-between an overtime loss in the second match. Fullhart upset Sanderson at last month's U.S. nationals to gain the No. 1 seeding in freestyle.

Otherwise, the top-seeded wrestlers had relatively little trouble.

Five of the seven freestyle champions needed the minimum two matches to earn trips to Athens: Stephen Abas (121 pounds), Eric Guerrero (132), Joe Williams (163), Daniel Cormier (211 1/2) and Kerry McCoy (264 1/2). National champion Jamill Kelly eliminated Jared Lawrence in three matches at 145 1/2 pounds.

U.S. women's champions Patricia Miranda (105 1/2 pounds), Sara McMann (138 3/4 pounds) and Toccara Montgomery (158 1/2 pounds) also won two in a row, with Montgomery eliminating the fast-tiring Kristie Marano by 9-6 in overtime and 4-2.

Marano was top-seeded at 138 1/2, but missed making weight Friday by one pound. She may spend the next four years wondering if that one pound cost the seven-time world medalist an appearance in the first Olympic women's wrestling competition.

The only women's challenger to make the team was 121-pounder Tela O'Donnell, who once played on her Alaska high school's boys football team. She beat top-seeded Tina George.

The challengers went 3-3 in Greco-Roman, with 121-pounder Dennis Hall outlasting top-seeded Brandon Paulson in an exhausting three- match series between 1996 Olympic silver medalists. The final match lasted 16 minutes, 54 seconds and four overtimes, or nearly 11 minutes longer than a regulation match.

Also making the Greco-Roman team were Jim Gruenwald (132), Oscar Wood (145 1/2), Brad Vering (185) and Garrett Lowney, who ousted national champion Justin Ruiz at 211 1/2 pounds.

Gardner wrestled with a dislocated right wrist that popped out of place seven times during the U.S. nationals and later required surgery, yet successfully countered the power moves that allowed Byers to upset him 3-1 last month.

Now, the man who defeated the supposedly unbeatable Alexander Karelin in Sydney can put the misadventures and near tragedy of the last three years behind him and focus on another Olympics.

"I thought this was an impossible goal," Gardner said. "To be sitting up here again is a miracle."

Separated from his snowmobiling companions during a Wyoming blizzard in early 2002, Gardner spent a subzero night in scary seclusion and lost a middle toe to frostbite. Earlier this year, he escaped injury when he rolled his motorcycle, only to badly injure his wrist a few days later.

He also has had to adjust to wrestling without the balance and leverage he lost when his toe was removed, and to weighing nearly 20 pounds less than he did in Sydney because of a worldwide realignment of weight classes. But he also has several more years of mat awareness and experience to lean on than he had in 2000.

That helped against Byers, who, with Gardner, is one of only four U.S. Greco-Roman wrestlers to win a world championship. Gardner's ability to counter everything Byers threw at him frustrated Byers, who looked disconsolate once the second match ended.

"But I'll do anything I can to get him another medal," said Byers, a U.S. Army staff sergeant. "He's an important man."

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