Erica Wiebe leads a strong female contingent on the mat
Canada will have contenders in all six women’s classes
For Erica Wiebe, one of Canada’s best medal hopes on the wrestling mat at the Rio Olympics, it all started with a misleading sign on the door of her school gym: “Co-ed wrestling.”
“Spandex and boys — that seemed pretty interesting to me,” she says, laughing at the memory of her Grade 8 self.
“But girls weren’t actually allowed on the team that year, the sign was (wrong). Me and my best friend were so jazzed up to try wrestling and then we weren’t allowed, so that’s maybe a recipe for me.”
But nothing would stop her from wrestling when she attended high school at Sacred Heart Catholic in Stittsville, Ont., a suburb of Ottawa. She even convinced a few girlfriends to join her.
“Anyone can wrestle,” she said. “They don’t have tryouts, they don’t have cuts. If you survive, you make the team.”
Two girls quit the first week, but her best friend stuck it out for the first year and then she was on her own — the only girl on the team — the rest of high school.
Not only did that turn out well for her — she’s ranked second in the world in her weight class — but the fact that Canada’s men and women do train together in high school and university gyms across the country has been an important contributor to Olympic success for the women’s team.
Canada and Japan are the only two countries with a woman qualified in every weight class for the Rio Games. The U.S. couldn’t do it and neither could Russia; they have four and five, respectively.
But Canada has a strong wrestler in all six women’s classes: Jasmine Mian (48 kg), Jillian Gallays (53 kg), Michelle Fazzari (58 kg), Danielle Lappage (63 kg), Dorothy Yeats (69 kg) and Wiebe at 75 kg.
They are all Olympic rookies but they’ve had success at other world events, including Commonwealth and Pan Am Games and, as Wiebe already knows, the Olympic mats are the same as any other.
At the 2012 London Games, where she was a training partner for a Canadian wrestler competing there, she snuck up on the Olympic mats one day between sessions.
“I was like ‘OK, these mats are just like any other mats and I’m going to be here one day.’ ”
Four years later, the 27-year-old isn’t just going to the Olympics, she’s pegged as the team’s best hope for a gold medal.
That’s the kind of hype that follows an athlete with such a high ranking and a string of big tournament wins the last two years.
“It’s nothing,” she says, dismissing all that.
“The rankings are subjective. It’s not like the 100-metre dash and this is my time, in wrestling anything can happen. I think all that matters is that I feel ready to be No. 1 on Aug. 18 and that’s the plan.” It won’t be easy. She’ll face American Adeline Gray, a three-time world champion and one of the most dominant wrestlers in any weight class. When they met in the final of the Rio test event this past January, Gray won right at the buzzer.
Gray has been vocal about her goal to win the first gold medal in women’s wrestling for the U.S. That could never be Wiebe’s goal, however, since Carol Huynh, an assistant chef de mission for Team Canada, won in 2008.
Regardless of who takes home the medals, Rio represents wrestling’s big moment to show the world it was worth saving.
In 2013, wrestling was tossed from the Olympic program post-2016 and, following frantic lobbying by the international wrestling body and promises to make the sport more exciting for spectators and TV broadcasters, reinstated seven months later.
Freestyle classes were reduced for men and increased for women, bringing the sport closer to gender parity and rule changes were adopted to reward more aggressive, active wrestling.
The addition of two more women’s classes is a boon for Canada, which won two medals in just four classes at the past two Olympics.
“Our little sport is competing with sports like swimming and athletics in Canada in terms of medal performance at the Olympic Games,” national team coach Leigh Vierling says. “These guys take that very seriously.”
When Vierling says guys, he’s talking about the women on the team. There are two men — Haislan Garcia and Korey Jarvis — but they are longshots for medals. Daniel Igali’s gold in 2000 at the Sydney Games was the last Canadian men’s medal.
It’s on the women’s side Canada has consistently delivered since their Olympic debut in 2004.