Wrestling

Sydney 2002

Gay Games VI

For a glorious year and half over 2001 and 2002, I did freestyle wrestling here in Sydney, Australia. 

I had been curious about wrestling since seeing Greco-Roman wrestling at the Olympics and I knew there was a club in Sydney for gay men to learn and practise freestyle wrestling.

I finally found out where they met and went along to where they train at Boxing Works in the CBD.

After a few false starts in late 2000, I started training regularly with them and their great coach, Brendan, in March 2001 and managed to train a few times a month with them (if I wasn't off on business trips) until May of 2002, when I injured my shoulder and took a long break. Looking back, I didn't know I've been training so long. Since lots of guys train every week or more than once a week, I'd been taking it pretty casually.

Approaching Sydney 2002 Gay Games VI, I decided that I'd enter the novice category, rather than the open competition, partly because the schedule conflicted with touch footy, partly because I'd been injured and was out of practice, and maybe mostly because I was scared and didn't believe I could do it. Just before the Games, I went back to training twice to practise for the novice day. I was incredibly impressed with the Harbour City Wrestling Club guys. They'd been training at the university as well as our regular Fridays and had thrown themselves into the spirit of the games with courage and strength.

It inspired me to challenge myself, and after doing the novice day on Sunday 3 November, I entered the open competition the next day in the 66 kg category. I've never been quite so nervous, and I spent the entire day not believing that I was doing what I was doing. And at the end of the day, after 4 matches, each one that I lost, but two where I gave my opponents a run for their money, and another one where I stayed up much longer than I expected, I felt an unbelievable sense of pride and joy.

I challenged myself like I have never challenged myself before. I entered a physically aggressive competition when I've never seen myself or believed myself capable of doing something like that. I had many wonderful wrestlers "adopt" me and give me support and coach me and I met some incredible people from around the world. I'd like to thank everyone who made my day unforgettable.

I wrestled a bit after the Games but managed to do something nasty to my back in May 2003 and haven't been back since. But I really enjoyed my time doing it and all the people I met through it.

For those who want to wrestle in Sydney, click on the Harbour City link below - practices are Friday night. Go on, you know you want to.

Since I first put up this page, a number of the links have gone dead. Sadly, the terrific professional shots of the day, which were posted on "event images" have been taken down. Still, over 50,000 of you have visited this page since 2003 so there must be some photos of interest...:

• 1 & 2. There are 120 photos up so I've divided them into 2 sets of 60, 5 pages to a set. Enjoy.
• 3. Also some extra shots from our social day.
• 4. Jim Provenzano, a wrestling medalist in the Amsterdam Gay Games and a writer and novelist, did some reporting on the games. His article on wrestling that mentions me is included here too!
• 5. Here's a link to our local gay wrestling club!
• 6. Found the link to 24 photos from Montreal's 2006 Outgames
• 7. A book from Germany with personal highlights from Gay Games participants - my contribution was on wrestling of course.
• 8. And here's a link to the 2006 Chicago Gay Games Photos - there's about 3 wrestling pages to browse.
• 9. An Aussie wrestler asked me to put up a link to his site "Mat Links". Here it is.

Enjoy - and be safe out there!

Andy.

				(May 2003, I'm seeing what happens to my site's traffic if I advertise this wrestling page with Men on the Net)
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