Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold (11 page)

Meeting adjourned, Terry stayed.

Between the growing expectations of the boycott and the distractions over Terry at a time when I needed to be nearing my peak in training, I felt as if the forces of the universe were conspiring against me.

T
he 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles was a return engagement, marking the first time the Summer Games had been held in the United States since Los Angeles had hosted the 1932 Olympics. Los Angeles had beat out New York City in winning the right to serve as the host city in the country’s bid to bring the Olympics back to the United States. The two cities had served as bookends, though, for the Olympic torch relay, which would begin in New York City and last 82 days, trekking 9,000 miles through 33 different states before culminating in Los Angeles for the Opening Ceremony, where President Ronald Reagan would officially open the Games in his home state.

The boycott, of course, dominated much of the pre-Olympics talk. With the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc of countries not participating, the US team was expected to run away from the remaining competition in the medals standings.

Americans anticipated the Olympic debut of superstar sprinter and long jumper Carl Lewis. Diver Greg Louganis would finally receive his opportunity to follow up on his silver-medal performance in the 1976 Games in Montreal. Louganis had appeared primed to win a gold medal, if not two, at the 1980 Games before the US boycott. As far as international athletes, there was a lot of curiosity about West German swimmer Michael Gross, who, from
images of his freakishly long arms coming out of the water, had picked up the nickname “the Albatross.” And then there was the US men’s basketball team that had won gold in all but two prior Olympics—in 1972 because of a controversial loss to the Soviets, and in 1980 when they were denied the opportunity because of the boycott. That was before the Dream Team days, when college athletes were still entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining dominance in the game invented in our country. Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, and Chris Mullin were on the ’84 team, and all three would be part of the first Dream Team eight years later.

At a time when government spending for hosting Olympics was being scrutinized worldwide, the LA Games, under the leadership of Peter Ueberroth, was the first to be privately funded. Organizers bucked the trend of host nations building new venues for Olympics and then finding themselves stuck with trying to figure out what to do with the huge facilities after the Games ended. Although Los Angeles was the host city, venues already in place throughout Southern California were employed to host competitions.

Instead of building one Olympic Village to serve as the home of all the athletes, three villages were established on university campuses: the University of Southern California and UCLA in Los Angeles, and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, up the Pacific Coast.

The wrestlers were assigned to stay at USC. I remember noting a lot of pastel colors, for some reason, when we arrived. But other than that, I ignored much of what USC looked like for the Olympics, not to mention what was going around me. I was there to go to war, and that was it.

We had to get in line and walk through a metal detector to receive our credentials. The young lady who handed me my credentials had a media guide she was asking athletes to sign next to their picture. She opened to the page with my weight class. Chris Rinke, the Canadian ranked third, one spot behind me, had signed his photo.

“I see Rinke signed,” I told her.

“Yeah,” she said, “and he said he’s going to win it. He was dead serious.”

My face instantly warmed as blood sprinted to it. I could already tell these next two weeks weren’t going to be fun. Up until that point, I had competed in only three international events: the 1982 World Cup, 1983 World Championships, and 1983 Pan Am Games. I had won the World Cup, but Rinke had beaten me at the Pan Ams the only time I had faced him.

The five-day freestyle Olympic tournament wouldn’t begin until the Games’ tenth of fifteen days of competition. The Greco-Roman portion started two days after the Opening Ceremony, which I couldn’t even enjoy because of what waited ahead of me. I wished we could have traded places on the schedule with the Greco-Romans so I could have gotten the competing part out of the way and enjoyed life in the Olympic Village.

Greco-Roman was finished by the first full weekend. The United States had never medaled in Greco-Roman at the Olympics, but that year our guys won two gold medals (Jeff Blatnick and Steve Fraser), a silver, and a bronze. There was a lot of partying that Friday at the Olympic Village, with the wrestlers dancing around and all happy. I wanted to join in their celebration, but I wouldn’t allow myself to because of the psychological
damage it could cause if I showed too much happiness before competing.

Plus, their unprecedented success put more pressure on us in freestyle.

I spent most of my time leading up to our event training, eating, and sleeping to conserve energy. Free video games were set up in the Olympic Village for the athletes. You’d think those would be a source of fun, but they weren’t for me.

I was playing a video boxing game when Stan Dziedzic, our team manager and a former Olympic bronze medalist and national team coach, started watching over my shoulder. My next opponent came up on the screen—Reşit Karabacak, “the Turk,” who was ranked first in my weight class.

“Hey, Mark, there’s the Turk,” Stan joked.

I didn’t laugh. In fact, I didn’t react at all. Nothing was funny, nor would anything be funny, until I finished competing. I didn’t talk about opponents or potential opponents ahead of matches, and I wasn’t going to talk with Stan about Karabacak.

This is none of his business
, I thought.
This is my life. This is something that’s going to go down in history. Forever. Here he is making light of it, and this is serious business for me. If I lose to anybody, including the Turk, I won’t get to call myself an Olympic champion.

I ignored Stan, and he walked away. When I finished my game, I left and went back to my room.

Two days before our event, Dan Gable moved our team from the Olympic Village to a Motel 6 less than a mile from the wrestling venue, the Anaheim Convention Center. That way we wouldn’t have to wait for buses, would have easy access to the scales, and
could be in control of how and when we wanted to work out and cut weight.

The next day, my dear mom came to our hotel and asked if I wanted to go to Disneyland and get something to eat. One day from starting what had already taken on the feel of the most intense competition of my life and she thought I would actually consider going out to eat and having fun? Mom!

Weigh-ins took place two hours before the competition, and that was also when the draw for the tournament’s two eight-man pools occurred. After each wrestler weighed, he reached into a bucket and pulled out a plastic egg. Inside the egg was his number for the tournament. I drew number 6, which meant I would wrestle against number 8 in the first round. The Turk drew number 8!

I was stunned. The first- and second-ranked wrestlers were going to meet in the first round. In two hours, I would be making my Olympic debut in what basically was the gold-medal match.

I was scared to death. I went back to my room and told my girlfriend about the draw.

“You look terrible,” Terry told me.

Give Terry points for being honest. I just wished she hadn’t been honest in that situation.

I stood in front of the mirror and looked like I always did after cutting to make weight. Wrestlers call that look “sucked,” with hollow cheeks and eyes. I mumbled something to Terry like, “You just haven’t seen me after weigh-ins lately.”

I prayed I wouldn’t feel as terrible in two hours as Terry said I looked. I plopped down on the corner of my bed and stared at the wall, sweating like a pig.

Good thing I didn’t have to catch a team bus to the convention center. The way my luck was going, the bus probably would have run me over.

—

F
acing the number one wrestler in the world in my weight in the first match, I knew I would have to perform my best immediately. In the first move of the match, the Turk underhooked my arm and followed with a limp arm to a single leg. I answered by grabbing him in a double wristlock. I had performed that move probably a thousand times with a guy’s head on the inside trapped against my body. But I had watched a Cuban wrestler at the Pan Ams make that move with his opponent’s head on the outside. I had only done the move that way a few times and only in practices. But this was
the
match of the tournament, right out of the gate.

It was either me or him. I chose me.

I locked his arm, threw the move to break his grip, elevated him in the groin with the arm he had between his legs, and threw him head over heels. I expected Karabacak to do a front roll, giving me two points. Instead, he landed on his head, unexpectedly halting all his momentum. I kept his left arm locked and it continued over his head. I felt and heard Karabacak’s elbow pop. I knew right away he had broken a bone.

Thirty seconds into the match, I pinned him. The home crowd, not having heard Karabacak’s elbow snap as I had, roared its approval. I raised my fists and walked off the mat, unsure of what to do, as the Turk remained on the floor and the ref calmly motioned for medical help.

That was a weird moment. It’s unusual for that kind of injury
to occur during a match. I certainly hadn’t tried to hurt Karabacak. The injury happened because of how he landed as I had his arm locked. But then again, I couldn’t show any weakness on the mat. Wrestling is a man’s game. Freak injuries—to you or your opponent—are always possible. Inherent in wrestling is the mutual agreement between opponents that they are about to attempt to commit battery on each other. Every wrestler risks injury. I suffered more injuries in wrestling than I could count, including numerous broken bones. I think I wrestled injured more often than uninjured.

When Karabacak got injured, I couldn’t get out of my mind-set because of what had happened to him. I still had four more matches to go in the tournament.

I also knew the ramifications. The top-ranked wrestler had just left the tournament; he wouldn’t be able to wrestle his way back to a chance at the gold medal.

In the match right before mine, Dave had hurt the knee of a Yugoslavian while pinning him. Wrestling’s international governing body is the Fédération Internationale des Luttes Associées (FILA), or in English, the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles.

The head of FILA, Milan Ercegan, happened to be from Yugoslavia. He had just watched, in back-to-back matches, the American Schultz brothers pin and send his fellow countryman to the hospital and knock another competitor out of the tournament. He assigned Head Official Mario Saletnik to watch my and Dave’s matches the rest of the tournament as a fourth official.

I defeated a wrestler from Italy in my next match in my group later that night, under close scrutiny of the extra official. While
waiting to weigh in, I went up into the seats to join Mom in watching Dave. While I was up there, the public address announcer said, “Mark Schultz has been disqualified from the match against Turkey.”

Mom started freaking out next to me.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my God!”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I told her, got up, and walked away.

Turkish officials had protested my victory, demanding that I be disqualified. Tape of the match was reviewed, and I was disqualified for “excessive brutality.”

I knew there were two parts to the decision. First, did I win or lose the match? Second, would I be kicked out of the tournament? Because the announcer had only said I had been disqualified, I knew I could still wrestle and come back and win gold.

Technically, the Turks should not have been allowed to protest because they didn’t file their protest until a couple of hours after the thirty-minute time limit for appeals had expired. In fact, FILA at first denied the Turks’ request. Then FILA reconsidered and ruled to disqualify me. If the Turks had filed in time, I probably would have been booted from the tournament.

The move was illegal. I’ve never denied that. But it wasn’t an intentional breaking of the rules, and I definitely was not aiming to injure Karabacak. I didn’t talk to the media that night, but Gable gave a good explanation to reporters. With the arm at ninety degrees, he said, the move is legal. My hold started out legal. But the way the Turk landed caused me to take his arm past ninety degrees. At ninety-one degrees, the move became illegal and subject to the “excessive brutality” ruling.

I respected Dan. Even though I defeated three of his guys
from Iowa in the NCAA finals, I never got the feeling he didn’t like me.

I didn’t talk to Dan at the arena after the announcement was made. Dave did, though.

“They’re trying to turn this into a sissy sport,” my brother complained.

I heard that the Turkish government, I believe it was, had promised Karabacak money or property or something like that of value if he had won gold. He said in a Turkish newspaper article that I had fouled him. Years later, I was talking with a journalist who said he would be seeing Karabacak soon. I signed a T-shirt for Karabacak with a note saying I hadn’t intended to hurt him and would like to be friends with him. I’ve never heard anything from the Turk, so I don’t know if the shirt made it to him.

—

W
ith the disqualification, I knew I couldn’t lose either of my two remaining group matches and still have a shot at the gold-medal match. Chris Rinke, the confident autograph signer from Canada, was my next opponent.

After a 2–2 tie in the first period, I started the second period with a takedown and gut wrench. The ref gave me one point for the takedown and two points for the gut wrench. The scoreboard showed me with a 5–2 lead. In freestyle, if a match ends in a tie, the tiebreaker is known as criteria. If all the points are scored on one-pointers, the wrestler with the last point scored wins. But if any two-point moves are scored, the wrestler with the last two-pointer wins.

At that point, I had a three-point lead and had scored the last
two-pointer. I could give Rinke three takedowns and still win on the criteria tiebreaker.