Free The Best American Sports Writing 2014 by Glenn Stout Page A

the 2012 Olympic Trials, I told Robles about my encounters with college wrestling’s two most revered coaches. He looked entertained, but not as gratified as I had anticipated.
    I tried something more provocative. I told him how some former and would-be Olympians had reacted to his decision not to try out for the U.S. Olympic team. Kenny Monday, a 1988 gold medalist, and Raymond Jordan, who had helped coach Robles at ASU, both told me they consider the top position to be Robles’s strongest, and that freestyle wrestling—a variant of the sport practiced at the Olympics—is better suited for wrestlers who excel in the neutral position. Jarod Trice, who wrestled at the Olympic Trials and calls Robles a close friend—“I just texted him this morning! He’s my boy!”—reluctantly agreed: “I don’t know how the leverage would work for him [in freestyle wrestling], because of the leg.”
    Where collegiate wrestling awards two points for any takedown, freestyle scoring is more variable. The simple leg tackles preferred by Robles earn just one point, while dramatic lifting-and-throwing takedowns—nearly impossible to execute while balancing on one leg—are worth three or five. Even more problematic, time on the mat, where Robles does most of his damage, is limited in freestyle wrestling.
    Still, Robles might be a better freestyler than he at first appears. He may not throw many opponents, but his ultralow center of gravity makes him equally difficult to throw. And unlike college wrestling, where using the same tilt twice in a row without changing holds doesn’t earn points, in freestyle wrestling Robles could repeatedly roll his opponent with a single tilt, scoring with every revolution.
    I shared his colleagues’ comments with Robles because I was frustrated by his choice to forgo the Olympic Trials. I was looking for an explanation, and somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I harbored a hope of spurring him to action, to prove the naysayers wrong. But before I let him speak, I goaded him one more time. Was it possible that he was too—ahem—
inhibited
to try out for London? Did he prefer walking away a college champion to risking a loss at the next level?
    â€œA little bit,” Robles confessed. He admitted to wanting to end his career on a high note, and to the seductive appeal of giving up to mitigate the pressure that accompanies sustained success.
    â€œBut my dream was never to win a gold medal,” he said. “When I was in college, when I was wrestling in high school, my dream was to be a national champion.” He said he missed wrestling, profoundly, but that he was happy with the direction his life had taken in the last year: connection with fans, lucrative motivational speaking engagements, Nike sponsorship, a book release, a movie deal in the works.
    And then he hinted at the 2016 Olympic Games, in Brazil: “I’m still young. I’m only 23 . . . Four years from now, I’ll still be prime age.” (At the time the International Olympic Committee had dropped wrestling from the 2020 Games, and it appeared Brazil would be Robles’s last chance at Olympic competition; the sport was reinstated in February 2013.)
    I didn’t find it an altogether satisfying answer, and suddenly I realized why. I’d been wanting Robles to see things my way. I’d seen his crossing over to freestyle wrestling, where his anatomical advantages are reduced, and
still
winning—as I imagined he would—as the ultimate rebuttal to his critics. I’d wanted him to erase the invisible asterisks that accompany every record he ever posted. I’d wanted Robles to demonstrate, once and for all, that ingenuity and discipline, not brawn, were the bedrock of his success, because these are attributes I value.
    But I was just another guy reaching for phantom parts of Robles. His journey has been about many things, but it is not,