The best words I have ever heard by a coach of any sport were spoken by Mark Prince to his young twin sons, who had just begun competing in wrestling. “Everybody loses sometimes.” Here’s another example.
Kyle Dake, who entered the Paris Olympic freestyle wrestling tournament having already won one Olympic bronze medal and four World Championships, was seeded # 1 in the 74 kg weight class. However, as he later wrote on social media, “Everything happens for a reason and in perfect timing. I dreamt I could have walked away from Paris with a Gold Medal around my neck, but that wasn’t meant to be.”
Not only had he dreamt of a gold medal, but he had also spent years training and competing against the world’s best to prepare for that dream match when he would win gold. However, in his Paris semi-final match, he met D. Takatani (the 4th seed) from Japan, whom he had defeated in 2023. This time he lost 20-8.
Dake went on to beat K. Tsabolov of Serbia 10-4 in the bronze medal match, and after his hand was raised, he bounded into the stands to hug his wife and two children. There was no sulking and whining that he, the favored wrestler to win gold, had not done so. Instead, by his actions following his match, he showed how to act. Later, after he was home, he wrote the words quoted above.
It was now Takatani’s turn to wrestle the match that Dake had dreamt about. Yet, like Dake, Takatani was denied as he suffered a 1st-period pin, earning a silver medal. While his coaches challenged the called pin, the call was upheld, and Takatani showed incredible sportsmanship as he accepted the result.
D. Takatani: Before my match, Kyle was going into the stands, and he looked so cool up there. I wanted to do the same thing, whether I won or lost. I copied him.
Both young men are incredible wrestlers who have accomplished much in the world of freestyle wrestling. They both have spent years honing their skills to be the best wrestler they can be, and because their chosen stage is small, they obviously know each other as competitors and, most of all, as people.
I like to think that Takatani, who had scored 20 points against Dake, knows Dake the wrestler and Kyle Dake the person and thus said, “I copied him.” I copied what I saw of him in the stands, not what I saw of him on the mat.
In The Road to Character, David Brooks examines the lives of a varied group of people.
“The people in this book led diverse lives. Each one of them exemplifies one of the activities that lead to character. But one pattern recurs: They had to go down to go up. They had to descend into the valley of humility to climb to the heights of character.” [quote from “The U-Curve section, Italics mine]
“Everybody loses sometimes,” said Coach Prince. How they handle loss determines how they will climb back to a position that reveals character. Takatani and Dake, the people who have shown us how to do that, are true Olympians.
