Plaasjapie twists arms to get to Olympics
Steyn de Lange from Limpopo is Team SA’s only wrestler at the Paris games
● Exactly how Steyn de Lange punctured the above-ground swimming pool on the family farm on the outskirts of Polokwane with an arrow is still a matter of debate.
Coach Jan Roets said De Lange — who will be South Africa’s only wrestler at the Paris Olympics — had been given a bow and arrow as a gift as a youngster.
“He put up a target or something, but the swimming pool was behind it and he shot at the target and the arrow went through it into the pool. There was water everywhere,” Roets said, as the wrestler’s father, Louis, nodded with a smile.
But De Lange, 23, who has finished his second year of actuarial science at Ryder University in New Jersey, denies that version.
“Here’s the unbridled truth. They never want to believe me, but there was no bow involved, which maybe makes it worse, but I’ll die on that hill,” he said, laughing. “I was just playing, balancing it and throwing it up in the air. Big yard, throwing it in the air, not thinking, and then it went sideways.”
But that’s about the only thing that they disagree on. Roets believes De Lange, who fights in the 97kg freestyle dione vision, can become the first South African wrestler to reach an Olympic podium.
“If you don’t step on the mat with a goal of gold, what are you doing there? However, I’m definitely the underdog and that’s the way I like it,” said De Lange.
“I’m more of a close-quarters wrestler. I like tying people up, I like being a bit more in their face, taking arms away, taking their tools away basically.”
He has previously wrestled or trained with several of his potential opponents in Paris.
“I know I don’t have to stand back for anyand I know if I apply myself correctly, I can do really well.”
De Lange is no stranger to fighting the odds. When he won bronze at the world junior championships in Russia in 2021 he had not fought for more than a year because of the restrictions around the Covid pandemic.
But he still trained like a Trojan. They put a mat outdoors at the farm and Roets brought wrestlers from town.
When they were allowed back in the gym, they placed an assault bike on the mat and had De Lange bouncing between that and wrestling two clubmates at once, because they didn’t have anyone else the same size.
Even at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham where De Lange won silver, he had been put into isolation after testing positive for Covid. For a week or so he was unable to train, being locked in a room, waiting to provide a negative test.
The wrestler is listed as Nicolaas on the official team lists. “Call me Steyn,” he insists.
De Lange carries two big cauliflower ears and he’s as proud of them as he is of the trophies he’s won. “I busted both my ears before I was 14. [They’re] a badge of pride. I love them,” he said, dismissing any thought of plastic surgery.
“I love them too much. They help me with party tricks as well,” he said, demonstrating how he can move them independently of each other.
Roets — whose club is nicknamed Dagestan, the Russian region home to many champion grapplers including mixed martial arts fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, who beat Connor McGregor — recalled the day De Lange joined his club as a five-yearold.
Broken arm, in a cast. He did everything with all the guys and at the end of the session he was in tears because it was painful and I just told him: ‘Plaasjapies [farm boys] don’t cry.’ Ever since then we had a very, very close bond.”
Roets travelled every weekend to get action for his young fighters. They would braai on a Friday night, go to bed early and compete the next day. Afterwards, they would go to the nearest Spur to celebrate.
There De Lange would be asked to win the trampoline, a popular item in the play area, for his clubmates to enjoy.
“I was like seven, eight, nine and all the other kids were three, four years older than me.”
The older wrestlers would go to the kids playing on the trampoline and suggest they wrestle this laaitie for the right to play there.
They invariably agreed because De Lange was so much smaller — but they always lost.
“I was the risk-free enforcer because, which kid wants to go to his mom complaining that ‘that little kid beat me up’?”
De Lange had no qualms about returning to South Africa to rejoin Roets to put the finishing touches on his Olympic preparations. “He’s the person on this Earth that knows me best and knows where I make mistakes, where I tend to trip up. And he’s the best.”
Roets believes in making the most out of limited resources. “We think outside the box and we don’t complain ... We want to medal. This is Steyn’s first Olympic Games … if he can do that, we can prepare for the next four years to actually be the Olympic champion.”