Cautious wrestler beaten by the clock

RIO DE JANEIRO — Dori Yeats retired at age 14 from gymnastics because she felt too old, too big and too beat up to carry on.

So she approached her dad Doug — a five-time Canadian Olympian in Greco-Roman wrestling — and asked if she could switch sports. The Montrealer nearly quit wrestling after a week, her arms and legs covered with bruises and her stomach turning from having people sweat all over her.

Good thing she stuck with it. On Wednesday, the 23-year-old Yeats faced off against Sweden’s Jenny Fransson for bronze.

Fransson, a 2012 world champion, schooled the cautious Canadian in the tactics of the game with a 2-1 victory.

“On one hand, I didn’t necessarily expect to make it this far at my first Olympic Games — especially since last year at world championships, I finished dead last,” said Yeats. “I just have a ton of confidence now for the future. I know exactly what I need to work on.”

Needing points with time ticking down, Yeats made her move and forced Fransson out of the ring — but it came about two seconds too late. Now the civil engineering student at McGill University has four years to dissect what went wrong.

“I should have done that two seconds earlier,” she said. “Live and learn. I wanted a medal. Every athlete who comes to the Olympics wants a medal. But I’m pretty happy with how I did.”

Canadian head coach Leigh Vierling said caution cost Yeats the bronze.

“It’s hard, because you have to let go of your security blanket at some point in time,” Vierling said. “She’s kind of got away with it sometimes against inferior athletes, but (against) the really solid athletes, you just have to bang on that door until the sucker falls in.”