Beat the Streets Update: 6/19/08

Busloads of wrestlers from New York City's Beat the Streets Wrestling Program will be attending the Bruce Baumgartner Wrestling Camp in July.  Mike Cigala, Executive Director, has organized a large contingent mostly from Brooklyn High and Middle Schools to spend a week being inspired and motivated by one of America's most decorated athletes.

There will also be buses attending the John Smith Wrestling Camp at Hudson Valley CC, the Cornell University Rob Koll Wrestling Camp , the Tom Brands Wrestling Camp at Binghamton University as well as 1988 Olympian Ken Chertow Camps, who has the largest camp system in the United States.

J. Robinson Intensive Camps has a special Camp Leadership Program designed to build leadership skills for every PSAL High School Team.  Larry Cantor, PSAL Commissioner, recruited 2 underclassmen, recommended by their coaches, from 30 High Schools to attend the 2 week Intensive Camp in Oregon.

Mike Novogratz, Chairman and the Board of Directors approved the Leadership Program for underclassmen to become the leaders of their teams next season.  According to Novogratz " wrestling builds leadership. We need strong leaders in each wrestling room in NYC. Wrestling builds mental toughness and strong leaders!"

Baumgartner set for Olympic Hall

One of the most iconic figures in American wrestling history will be induced into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame tonight in Chicago. Edinboro Athletics Director Bruce Baumgartner is the winningest international medalist in America, taking home nine World medals and four Olympic medals. A two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, Baumgartner's also a four-time World Champion.

BY JOHN DUDLEY
john.dudley@timesnews.com

EDINBORO -- Bruce Baumgartner hasn't forgotten his first trip behind the Iron Curtain.

At a checkpoint entering Romania in 1981, he peered up from his bus seat and saw a towering 20-foot fence topped with razor wire. Two more fences stood stoutly behind it. Dour guards patrolled the perimeter.

Once through, the outlook wasn't much better. The food couldn't be trusted. The accommodations were crude.

"It was just like everything I had heard," said Baumgartner, who won a World University Games championship on the trip while an undergraduate at Indiana State University. "The people were friendly and nice, but their government was very protective. They didn't want them interacting with American athletes at all."

Twenty-seven years later, Baumgartner said he is often reminded of how different things are.

The Cold War is over. Democracy prevails throughout many of the former Iron Curtain states. International wrestling has flourished, thanks in part to the removal of political and social roadblocks that hindered its growth.

Baumgartner, a 47-year-old Edinboro resident, retired from competition in 1997. After a stint as wrestling coach at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, he is in his 12th year as the school's athletic director.

But one thing hasn't changed. Now, as then, Baumgartner is as visible an icon as U.S. wrestling enjoys. Some say no one has more capably advanced the sport's cause.

Tonight, at the Harris Theater in Chicago, Baumgartner will be inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, honoring his four Olympic freestyle wrestling medals, including two gold, and his record 13 freestyle medals in 17 years of international competition.

"Bruce has been a great ambassador for wrestling for a very long time," said Lee Roy Smith, a former NCAA champion and World silver medalist and the current executive director of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Okla. "What he accomplished puts him in a classification that's rare not only among wrestlers, but rare among Olympic athletes of any sport."

Baumgartner is part of a star-studded, 20-member induction class that includes basketball great David Robinson, boxer Oscar De La Hoya, volleyball player Karch Kiraly, runner Joan Benoit Samuelson and the gold-medal-winning 1996 women's gymnastics team.

Along with his enormous collection of medals, though, Baumgartner also is remembered as an iconic symbol for wrestling and for U.S. Olympians.

After the Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, Baumgartner organized a pair of dual meets at Edinboro University's McComb Fieldhouse pitting U.S. wrestlers against teams from Cuba and the former USSR. The events became known as Friendship Summits I and II, and they were hailed both for the action they produced on the mat and for the camaraderie they inspired off it.

"I can remember being at the social gatherings with members of the Cuban and Russian delegations," said Edinboro University associate athletic director Todd Jay, the school's sports information director at the time. "We would exchange gifts, which was customary, and a lot of them wanted things like bluejeans. I think to Bruce, that cultural exchange that took place was almost as important as the wrestling itself. He brought them here and really opened his arms to them."

In 1996, Baumgartner's fellow Olympians chose him to carry the U.S. flag for the opening ceremonies at the Summer Games in Atlanta. During the run-up to the Games, USA Today, Time, Sports Illustrated and other national media outlets visited Edinboro for in-depth stories about his family and his pursuit of a fourth Olympic medal.

Still, the hype at home never matched the treatment Baumgartner received when he traveled abroad, especially in the former Eastern Bloc countries, whose wrestlers he battled throughout his career.

"Up until (1996), even after all the success he had, Bruce could have gone to Cedar Point for a day and never been recognized," Jay said. "But if he walked down the streets of Moscow, he would be mobbed. Some of the people idolized him, and others would have wanted to maul him."

Baumgartner's international career emerged in 1984, when he defeated Canada's Robert Molle to become the first U.S. freestyle super-heavyweight Olympic champion in 60 years.

The win was significant on two counts.

It allowed Americans to stake claim to having the biggest and strongest freestyle wrestler in the world at a time when the Cold War superpowers were angling for any edge they could gain, psychological or otherwise.

It also pegged the 23-year-old Baumgartner as a rising star on a U.S. team that had ridden the success of lightweight Dan Gable and middleweight John Peterson during the 1970s, but suddenly was lacking a big name to put on its billboard.

"He was given the torch by the legends of the sport like Gable and Peterson, and he took that torch and ran with it," said Kenny Monday, a 1988 Olympic champion who competed alongside Baumgartner on three U.S. Olympic freestyle teams. "As long as I've known him, he was driven to be the best in the world. He wanted to dominate. The way he carried himself and the way he approached his training and his life inspired everyone around him."

The 1992 Games established Baumgartner's dominance. There, in Barcelona, Spain, he won his second Olympic title by topping a field that included David Gobezhishvili, the Unified Team heavyweight who had beaten him for the gold at the 1988 Games. He became the first U.S. wrestler to medal in three consecutive Olympics.

Tonight, Baumgartner will join Gable as the only wrestlers in the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.

"He's really helping blaze a trail for wrestling," said Smith, who oversaw Baumgartner's induction into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2002. "I think this is a real tribute to the longevity of success he was able to sustain at a gold-level standard of competition. The record he set of 13 World and Olympic medals -- it's hard to imagine that ever being duplicated."

Given his international success, it's somewhat ironic that as far back as that first trip behind the Iron Curtain in 1981, Baumgartner never went abroad to pad his Rolodex. Always respectful and polite, Baumgartner said he stopped well short of pressing flesh with fans and competitors in Eastern Bloc nations.

"I had a pretty cordial relationship with guys I wrestled overseas," Baumgartner recalled this week. "But I never wanted to become too friendly. Some other guys did that, and it might be why they weren't as successful. I was there for one reason and one reason only -- to win, not to make friends or sightsee."

Baumgartner's medals
Bruce Baumgartner won the 1982 NCAA Division I heavyweight wrestling title at Indiana State University, but his career blossomed on the international mats. During 17 years, Baumgartner won a record 13 World and Olympic medals:

Gold medals:

• 1983 World Championships (Kiev, USSR)
  
• 1984 Olympics (Los Angeles)
  
•  1986 World Championships (Budapest)
  
•  1992 Olympics (Barcelona)
  
•  1993 World Championships (Toronto)
  
•  1995 World Championships (Atlanta)

•  1988 Olympics (Seoul)
  
•  1989 World Championships (Switzerland)
  
•  1990 World Championships (Tokyo)
  
•  1994 World Championships (Istanbul)

•  1985 World Championships (Budapest)
  
•  1987 World Championships (Claremont-Ferrand, France)
  
•  1996 Olympics (Atlanta)