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 Page B

left for the Junior World Team Trials in Brockport, I had learned how much I had progressed. Pat and I went to the swimming pool at the top of the hill above the dorms. With my gymnastics background, I was able to show off some tricks from the three-meter diving board. Then I joined Pat to sunbathe for a little while. After I had gotten comfortable and started soaking in the rays, all the talking around the pool ceased.
    I looked up to see that an incredibly gorgeous girl had entered the pool area. She had superthick, straight brown hair all the way down to her lower back, a beautiful face, gigantic breasts, and a perfectly round, rock-hard rear. Everybody stopped to watch her make her way around the pool. She walked toward Pat and me and laid her towel down just a few yards from us. After she stretched out on her towel, the poolside conversations and activities resumed.
    “I dare you to go over and talk to her,” Pat said to me.
    Why don’t you?
I thought to myself.
    “Okay,” I said, to Pat and myself.
    I walked over to where she was sunbathing and either I tuned out everything around me or all the conversations halted again.
    “Excuse me,” I said, getting her attention. “My friend dared me to come over here and talk to you. Could you just go along with me, let me sit here for a minute, and act like you like me?”
    “Sure,” she said, and visibly invited me to sit next to her so my friend could see.
    She gave me more than a minute—we talked for a few hours. She gave me her phone number and asked me to call her. Dave and I left the next day and I never saw her again.
    I had already felt like I was beginning to turn a corner in my ability to talk with girls. I’d had some cute girlfriends my freshman year, but nothing like Veronica or the girls I met at the pool and in Brockport.
    •
    The first thing I noticed upon our arrival in Mongolia was the huge military presence. Everywhere we turned, there was some combination of military trucks, soldiers, portraits of Vladimir Lenin, and the communist hammer and sickle symbol.
    Wrestling was huge in Mongolia. Genghis Khan’s army used wrestling, horseback riding, and archery to conquer territories in creating the largest empire in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Through all the centuries since, those three skills had remained valued in Mongolia.
    Our team visited an outdoor arena to watch an ancient traditional Mongolian wrestling exhibition at the Naadam festival. Theentire field was covered with wrestlers, and they performed a strange dance around a “referee” holding a pole. As the wrestlers circled the pole, they slowly flapped their arms like birds.
    Before each match, the two wrestlers would face each other, then slap the insides and outsides of their thighs.
    There were no weight classes or time limits for matches. A match ended when one wrestler took down his opponent or forced him to touch his knees, hands, or other body part to the ground. The winners remained in the tournament until the final two wrestlers squared off for the championship.
    It was interesting to see what wrestling might have been like centuries earlier. I’m not sure I liked the idea of not having weight classes, though. It had been tough enough going up one class to wrestle Banach at the trials!
    The heavyweight on our team angered me. Back then, there was no weight limit on heavyweights. Our big boy didn’t train as much as the rest of us, and when he did practice, he didn’t try as hard as I thought he should. He was big and fat and using his weight to win instead of any skill. He didn’t seem very mature, but then again all of us were under twenty.
    But what really pissed me off about this guy was that he would eat and drink in front of the rest of us as we cut weight. The drinking part really annoyed me. When you’re cutting and can’t afford to drink even an ounce of water, it’s cruel for another wrestler to walk near you with a cup in his hand.
    He and