Stranger Than Fiction (True Stories)

This was in February of 1997. Phil Lanzatella had qualified for the Olympic trials every year since 1980, when he was on top, still a teenager, but already a world-class wrestler, dating Water Mondale's daughter and headed for the Olympics in Moscow. The Olympics we boycotted that year. Now, for Phil the options were a mechanical valve, a pig heart valve, or a recovered human valve. The recovered valve was the choice that would let him still compete.

After that, he started helping coach at local colleges and high schools. He started feeling good, getting a little more active.

"I didn't tell my wife. I came home one day and said, 'Hey, Mel, what do you think about me wrestling? and she said, 'Yeah, okay, if you want to be single. I'm not going through that again. But she got used to the idea."

They've been married fifteen years.

Finally, Melody Lanzatella said, "If you're going to do this, then you're going to win."

So far, Phil hasn't. He didn't make it in the South Regionals.

"I took tenth in the Nationals, top eight qualifying, in Las Vegas. In Tulsa," he says, "my hotel van broke down, and I missed weigh-ins. I got stuck on the highway. So this is really it. This is it, literally."

So for Phil Lanzatella, thirty-seven, this is his last shot at the Olympics after decades of training and competition.

It's the last shot for Sheldon Kim, twenty-nine, from Orange County, California, who works full-time as an inventory analyst and is here with his wife, Sasha, and their three-year-old, Michaela, and who is busy right now trying to drop two extra pounds in the last half-hour before weigh-ins are over.

It's the last shot for Trevor Lewis, thirty-three, the comptroller at Penn State with a master's degree in engineering and architecture, who's here with his father.

It's the last shot for Keith Wilson, thirty-three, who has a baby boy due in two weeks and practices two or three times every day as part of the army's World Class Athlete program.

It's the last shot for Michael Jones, thirty-eight, of Southfield, Michigan, whose first film project, Revelations: The Movie, is about to begin production.

Jones says, "My body just can't go through another four years of wrestling guys like this. Like I say, my knees are starting to buckle. My back is starting to really get to me now. I don't want to get to around fifty years old and be bent over with a cane. This will definitely be my last Olympics."

It's the last shot for former college wrestler Timothy O'Rourke, forty-one, who last wrestled in 1980 and says, "I saw something on the Internet and thought, 'What the hell, I'll give it a shot.»

Despite everything at stake, the mood is less like a fighting tournament than a family reunion.

Keith Wilson is here from the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to compete as a 76-kilogram Greco-Roman wrestler.

"I don't hold anything in," he says. "I'm happy all the time. And if I get stressed, I have an okay outlet. I can just come here and beat the shit out of someone and I won't get in trouble for it. When you wrestle, it's for blood, but when you walk off the mat, you're friends again."

"It's almost like a family," says Chris Rodrigues. "You know everyone. I know everyone. You meet people you know, and everyone gets to know each other, hanging out at the big national tournaments. The Junior Nationals and the Nationals, every year. It's like a big connection to everyone. I know people in Moscow and Bulgaria. I know people around the world."

His father, David, adds, "That fraternity he's part of, when he goes to Michigan and gets a business degree and maybe goes out, and maybe he never wrestles another day in his life, but he'll run into a guy who wrestled during the same period of time he did, and that camaraderie will always be there."

Sean Harrington says, "When you meet another wrestler that you don't know, say you're on a trip, it's like you hear about people who own Corvettes, you always wave to each other. It's the same thing with wrestling. You have a camaraderie there because you know what the other guy's been through."

"It's just focusing the energy for the match," says Ken Bigley. "When we're on the mat, we want to just beat the piss out of each other, but when we're off the mat we know what each other's going through because we've been there. As much as you focus on beating your opponent up, as much as you're enemies on the mat, as hard as you're going to hit him, once you're off the mat we're not violent people, we just like a violent sport."

Nick Feldman calls it "elegant violence."

During the matches, wrestlers lie around on the edges of the mats and watch. Wearing baggy sweats. They stay together, arms around each other, or locked in practice holds, in the kind of laid-back closeness you see only in men's fashion advertising anymore. Abercrombie & Fitch or Tommy Hilfiger magazine ads. Nobody seems to need "personal space." Nobody throws off "attitude."

"You're brothers," says Justin Petersen, who at seventeen has a 4.0 GPA and runs his own Internet marketing business. "We eat together. When you have lunch, it's with the other wrestlers, and all you do is talk about how hungry you are and you can't wait until after that weigh-in so you can eat this or that. How many tenths of a pound you're going to lose in a day."

Nick Feldman says, "As a whole, wrestlers are more comfortable with themselves. There's not too many egos getting blown everywhere because that's just all smoke. It's anti-NBA, pretty much."

"Hell," says Sara Levin. "Going through hell together does it. You know that a guy in Russia is going through the same thing that this guy here is, trying to cut this much weight. They've got to do the same thing to get on the mat. There's a bond in that we're not a glamorous sport. We're not high-profile, money. You know that you're down and dirty."

Like brothers, they even look alike. Many with broken noses. Cauliflower ears. Most have a kind of pulpy, boiled look from sweating hard and landing on their faces. They're all muscled like an anatomy chart. Most seem to have heavy brows.

"In our wrestling room, we usually have the heat high," says Mike Engelmann, whose long eyelashes are in contrast to his brow. "What that does is it kind of flushes your body. You sweat all of it out. You drink more and sweat it out again, and it kind of sinks the cheeks and the eyes in, a little bit, and the forehead's all you've got left sticking out there. I kind of like the look, because it shows you're working hard."

This brotherhood thing seems to end when the ref blows his whistle.

On Saturday, despite all the years of preparation, the freestyle tournament is all over, fast.

Joe Calavitta loses and is out of the Olympics.

In Junior competition, Justin Petersen wins, and as soon as he's off the mat he throws up.

The few people in the stands cheer, Sheldon Kim's wife, Sasha, saying softly, over and over, "Go, Shel. Go, Shel. Go, Shel…"

"When you're in there, one-on-one with somebody," says Timothy O'Rourke, "you can't even hear what's going on in the stands."

O'Rourke is pinned in five seconds.

Sheldon Kim loses.

Trevor Lewis wins his first match, but loses his second.

Chris Rodrigues wins his first match.

Sheldon Kim's younger brother, Sean, loses to Rodrigues.

Mark Strickland goes against Sean Harrington, with Lee Pritts coaching from a corner. Behind in the match, Strickland calls a time-out, screaming at Pritts, "I'm going to break his ribs!" His face twisted as if he's already crying.

"The toughest guys I know cry after matches because they put so much into it," Joe Calavitta says.

Lee Pritts says, "You become so close with a workout partner that they're like your own blood, and if they go out and lose a match, lose a big match, then you've just had your heart torn out."