Free Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold by David Thomas, Mark Schultz

wrestled at 118 pounds but walked around in the off-season at 150. It was unreal.
    If you’re a wrestler who has to cut a lot, it can almost ruin the sport for you. Dave hated the way he had to cut at Oklahoma State so much that he left.
    There are differing philosophies on cutting weight. Mine before college had been to train as hard as I could and my body would assume its optimal weight. Then I would cut to whatever weight was just below that.
    Coach Auble, though, believed in cutting lots of weight and thought that if I wrestled at 150, I would be better. But I was so lean that cutting to 150 meant almost total dehydration, which lowers the body’s ability to consume oxygen and also decreases strength.
    After a miserable road trip at 150, we realized it was a mistake and I shot up to 158 the next day. That was the only time I gave control over my weight to a coach. Good wrestlers must eliminate mistakes, and that was one mistake I would never make again. Wrestlers stand alone on the mat, so they have to be their own coach.
    Don’t get me wrong about Coach Auble. He was an excellent coach and a role model for me. But my cutting all the way down to 150 didn’t work. I lost eight matches that year, and half of them were at 150.
    I ended my freshman season with an 18-8 record. I placed third in the conference tournament to qualify for the NCAA tournament, but I lost my first-round match there and didn’t place.
    —
    U CLA didn’t turn out to be a dream place, as it had seemed at the start.
    Something happened between Coach Auble and Chris Horpel that caused a noticeable tension between the two, and the team split into two groups when the wrestlers started taking sides. Dave and I felt stuck in the middle because we both liked Coach Auble and were also good friends with Chris.
    Coach Auble represented the type of wrestler I wanted to become, and I pretty much wanted to be just like him when I grew up. I have a saying that I’ve followed through the years: It’s not what you know, it’s who you are. I believe a wrestler’s personality, more than anything else, is what makes him win. Whatever it was about Coach Auble that made him win, I wanted those characteristics to rub off on me.
    On the other hand, Chris had begun helping me back when I was in high school and was part of the reason I had become successful in wrestling. He continued supporting me at UCLA.
    With Dave unable to wrestle in tournaments, all he could do that season was the daily workouts. The first time he and I worked out together came during the middle of the season. Dave was superaggressive with me. I thought he was trying to destroy my confidence.
    Confidence is either built up or torn down every day. I was feeling a lot of pressure competing as a freshman, and cutting weight had been an extra burden for me. I thought Dave was trying to take advantage of where I was mentally to build his confidence on my back.
    When I got pissed at how Dave was wrestling me and started stalling my ass off, Dave got annoyed and yelled at Chris to tell me to quit stalling.
    “That’s too bad, Dave,” Chris shot back. “Deal with it.”
    In my mind, I was like,
Yessssss!!!
because Chris was supporting me and not making me do what Dave wanted.
    So I, and Dave, never really took a side in the coaches’ dispute.
    The turmoil destabilized the team. We finished third in conference and Fred Bohna won the school’s first wrestling national championship. But that West Coast dynasty never developed. Coach Auble left UCLA after that season and didn’t return to coaching for several years. Chris Horpel left to become head coach at Stanford, his alma mater. Dave and I decided to get out, too, leaving after one year, with Dave never getting to take the mat as a Bruin.
    UCLA wound up dropping wrestling as an intercollegiate sport a year later, citing a lack of practice space and the cost to remedy the problem. I think the decision had its roots in all the problems during our