The pain was excruciating and Kurt Angle remembers it vividly.
It stands out among the memories of his 1996 Olympic experience — the neck pain he had to deal with through seven wrestling matches, two during the Olympic trials and five more in the Atlanta games.
There have been many courageous Olympic performances over the decades, but none more daring than when Angle won the freestyle heavyweight wrestling gold medal with a broken neck.
However, the two fractured cervical vertebrae, multiple herniated discs and four pulled muscles were only a part of what Angle would have to overcome 25 years ago.
“Looking back now it seems like just a few years ago,” said Angle, 52, and a Moon Township resident.
“I remember a lot of stuff that happened in ’96. It was a really hard time for me. I broke my neck, my coach got murdered six months before the Olympics. It was a really difficult time,” he said.
Angle had been training for the Olympics under Dave Schultz at the Pennsylvanian Foxcatcher Club. Schultz had become a paternal figure for Angle whose father, a crane operator, was killed in a construction accident when Kurt was 16.
Not long after Angle began working out eight to 10 hours a day at the facility, Schultz was shot to death by eccentric millionaire John du Pont, the sponsor of Schultz’s team of Olympic hopefuls.
Angle was devastated. He ended up joining the Dave Schultz Wrestling Club in Schultz’s memory and somehow persevered.
“I just tried to stay focused on what I needed to do and that was to win the gold medal,” Angle said.
But how did Angle manage to get past the pain to make it to the top of the medals podium?
“I found a great doctor. A lot of doctors wouldn’t clear me to wrestle. What I did in ’96 you couldn’t do today. No doctor would clear you to wrestle. The condition I was in would have been impossible to wrestle, but back then there was a little more leeway and I found a doctor that finally cleared me,” he said.
On the doctor’s advice, Angle did minimal training for a month, mostly resting. But it wasn’t enough.
“The doctor decided that what he would do is stick my neck with 12 different shots of Novocain five minutes before each match and that’s how I got through it. The pain was excruciating but once I got those shots it made me forget about my neck,” Angle said. “Deep down I was worried if I was going to damage it further but not feeling the pain helped me drastically.”
But an hour after each match, once the shots wore off, the pain would return.
“I did a lot of ice. There’s nothing else I could do. The ice numbed the pain for a period of time but when I stopped icing, which I would do about an hour before the match, I was in pain again until five minutes before the match when (the doctor) would give me the shots,” he said.
Perhaps it was the memory of his murdered coach or that burning desire that some athletes have, but, whatever it was, the Mt. Lebanon native remained determined as he reached the final. Despite his injury, Angle beat Iranian Abbas Jadidi to win the gold medal.
Winning an Olympic gold medal can be life changing. Yet despite the pride he took in his accomplishment, Angle said he felt lost when the games ended.
“When I won the gold, I didn’t know what I wanted to do after that because that’s all I focused on. I didn’t think about what I was going to do after the Olympics so it was a really depressing time for me,” he said.
Angle had an education degree from Clarion, but he wasn’t interested in teaching and coaching.
Then he got a multi-million dollar offer from Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to wrestle professionally.
“I brought the (contract) back to Pittsburgh and my agent Ralph Cindrich said ‘You’re not doing that crap. It’s fake. You’re the real deal. I’ll find you something else,’ and he threw it in the trash. In the back of my mind, I always wondered about that.”
Angle ended up taking a job as a weekend sports anchor for FOX 53 (WPGH-TV), a fledgling news operation at the time. His first night on the air, he bumped into a member of the crew on his way into the studio and his script went flying. Without time to retrieve the pages, he went to the set and was told to read from the teleprompter. But the teleprompter wasn’t working. He froze.
“When I took the sportscasting job in Pittsburgh, I loved it but I just wasn’t good,” he said.
After snubbing the organization, Angle ended up calling the WWE in 1998 and was told he would have to try out. He did and, in the more than two decades since then, has managed to become one of the most successful pro wrestlers of all time — earning induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. He retired in 2019 at age 50.
His wrestling success led to Angle being cast in several movies, including “End Game” in which he played serial killer Brad Mayfield, “River of Darkness” starring as sheriff Will Logan, and “Sharknado 2: The Second One” in which he played a fire chief.
Angle appears at Comic Cons all over the world and said he enjoys opportunities to interact with his fans, especially in his home town. He’ll be taking part in Steel City Con at the Monroeville Convention Center Aug. 13-15. Angle’s appearance is for Saturday only.
In the meantime, Angle said he’s been following this year’s Tokyo games and was excited to see American wrestler Tamyra Mensah-Stock win gold in the women’s 68kg freestyle event.
“She’s the first African-American woman to win a gold medal,” he said. “I think that is a really big deal for the Olympics. I think she is one of the names that is going to be remembered for a long time for what she did.”
Congrats to Tamyra Mensah-Stock on being the first American Black Woman in history to win Olympic Gold in wrestling!!! Awesome!!!!! #olympics #usawrestling pic.twitter.com/zGdpv3loQW
— Kurt Angle (@RealKurtAngle) August 3, 2021
As for his own gold medal, Angle said of all the things he has accomplished as an athlete, being an Olympic champion is the most important.
“That defined my life,” he said. “That’s the reason I did everything I did after that.”
Come see me at Steel City Con Saturday afternoon aug 14 at the Monroeville Convention Center in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pa! See ya there! #itstrue @Steelcitycon pic.twitter.com/nyJAK7qsOG
— Kurt Angle (@RealKurtAngle) August 4, 2021
Paul Guggenheimer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Paul at 724-226-7706 or pguggenheimer@triblive.com.
"later" - Google News
August 07, 2021 at 01:17AM
https://ift.tt/3lEpB2R
Kurt Angle reflects on gutsy gold medal victory 25 years later - TribLIVE
"later" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2KR2wq4
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Kurt Angle reflects on gutsy gold medal victory 25 years later - TribLIVE"
Post a Comment