To dine at the Cosmos Hotel is to experience bad food served poorly by sullen workers unconcerned with presentation or appeal.  Even still, a mix up that had us spend 12 hours at the competition venue with no food other than the container of dust-dry peanut butter sugar cookies that Steve Glassey from California bought for the group, the Snicker’s that Mike Stokes from Montana bought on several food runs, and the ice cream bars that Matt Hamptom from Illinois brought back from a foraging trip in the upper regions of the complex (the hands-down leader in the Best-Food-of-the-Trip-So-Far Contest) caused us to shamelessly load our plates at the buffet line late at night when we, and everyone else who was at the World Championships, off-loaded from the shuttle buses at close to 10:30 p.m. and headed straight for the dining hall.

Not all Kindergartens in all countries teach the concepts of waiting your turn, joining lines at the end rather than cutting, or saying please and thank you.  Buffet lines at the Hotel Cosmos filled with hungry people from 98 countries serve as proof.

And yet, none of that matters.  None of that matters because we got to spend the entire day in the Sports Centre Olimpisky watching the best Greco Roman wrestlers in the world compete for the title as World Champion in 55, 66, and 96 kilos (that’s 121, 145, and 211.5 pounds).  None of that matters because we spent the whole day watching GR wrestling at the highest level with Alexander Karelin, one of the best GR wrestlers ever, sitting 10-15 rows in front of us. 

Actually, Karelin was sitting then standing then sitting then standing then sitting over and over again as person after person made the pilgrimage up the bleachers to his seat to shake the great man’s hand and to respectfully bow at the honor of his greeting.  Mike Hampton happened to be on the floor when the Russian Federation paid tribute to Karelin during the Opening Ceremony (which happened at 7:13 p.m., just before the medal matches, six hours after the first whistle blew at 1:04 p.m. to start the first match of the day) and he, too, shook Karelin’s hand.

“He’s got hands as big as dinner plates,” Matt told us.

Opening Ceremony

The Opening Ceremony began with two graceful and muscular shirtless young men acrobatically flying and twirling and tumbling through space with their wrists in straps attached to a cable that raised and lowered them high off the floor. 

Then four wrestlers from the eastern Steppes dressed in traditional clothes and led by the have-you-ever-heard-a-deeper-bass-in-your-life fog horn voice of a cantor playing an oddly-tuned stringed instrument demonstrated traditional throws and trips and counters.  It was very cool.

Then every person who owned a dark suit and who was mildly associated with putting on the tournament got a chance to welcome the wrestlers and to wish them good luck.  Twice.  Once in Russian and once through the English translator. 

And then Karelin walked to the mike.  The wrestlers all got quiet.  Karelin knew that the athletes waiting behind the giant curtain didn’t want to hear long speeches in a foreign tongue by people who don’t know what it’s like to hop from foot to foot, keeping that fine sweat going, waiting to run up the 4 steps to the elevated mat to wrestle for a world medal.

In a soft voice for a giant of a man, he welcomed everyone.  He said that the competition of the various nations today reminded him of the saying, “We are rivals on the mat and friends in life.”  And then he wished everyone good luck and walked back to his spot.

It was short, sweet, and moving. 

Except that the translator actually said, “We are rivals on the carpet and friends in life.”

Then we rose for the FILA anthem (who even knew there was one and why is there?) followed by the anthem of the Russian Federation (think of Sean Connery and his crew singing on board the Red October, Matt correctly pointed out).

And then the medal matches started.

The Venue

It is a huge, domed, round facility built for the 1980 Olympics and not seriously upgraded since.  They use only a quarter of the floor space for the four elevated, octagonal competition mats.  Giant curtains hang from the ceilings to divide the floor space.  Six warm up mats and various temporary massage and training rooms fill another quarter of the space.  The other one-half holds the VIP lounge, a bar with a place to smoke, and the understaffed booth for the official t-shirt vendor of the 2010 World Championship.

The bathrooms are the refuge for those whose nicotine cravings are too strong to wait for the walk to the bar.  Security guards stand at every door and passageway and the architect who designed the place had a penchant for doors and passageways.  Many doors and passageways led to the same place so if the guards at one said “nyet” and the guards at another said “nyet”, you could be fairly certain that the guards at the third or the fourth would say “da.”

Citadel Bulldog fans would recognize the blue of the lower level seats.  Syracuse fans would feel at home in the orange seats of the loge and upper balcony.  The arena was less than ¾ full, not bad for a weekday.  The venders sold Coke, Sprite, Nestea, Lay’s chips of all sorts, Snicker’s, and some weird purple meat on a diagonally cut slice of bread, hand wrapped in plastic.  No matter how hungry we got, no one I know was tempted to unwrap that snack.

Throughout the day, techno-jazz played in the background over the loudspeakers.  A banner hung along the curtain between the main area and the warm up area.  To call a 70-yard wide, 20-yard high picture of wrestlers in action a “banner” doesn’t do the scale of the piece justice.

Five of the CAP coaches attended the 2009 Junior Worlds in Turkey last year: Matt Oney from Hawaii, Robbert Wijtman from California, Keith Norris from Maryland, Matt Hampton, and Mike Stokes.  Mike earned a reputation for bringing back unusual souvenirs; notably the large 2009 Junior World’s banner that hung in the gym in Turkey that he had to cut up to get home, and which now inspires the kids in his wrestling room.  Everyone kidded him about trying to get the 2010 World’s banner home.  He looked at it a long time before deciding he couldn’t.

Our Job

We missed lunch at the hotel because we wanted to get to the venue early and get familiar with the cameras and the lay out.   It turns out our filming will be useful for future competitions and not this one.  That makes sense given that matches later in the day happen faster and faster, with only 15 minutes of rest required between bouts.  No time to watch film or adjust strategies.  We rotated on the cameras every hour or so, depending on the matches, one camera for each mat.  I teamed with Matt Oney to orally give the time and the score as he filmed the wrestlers.  That didn’t last long.  Some fans rhythm-lessly beat a snare drum throughout the day while another tune-lessly and repeatedly bleated a horn.  Jason Bryant said on the audio-cast that the sole purpose of the horn was to annoy.  It worked.

The US Wrestlers

Spenser Mango had the 2008 Olympic champ beaten in both periods of his first match and yet the victory slipped away.  Spenser did not get pulled through repechage.  Faruk Sahin lost every first period but repeatedly came back with strong finishes.  He was eliminated one match short of the Bronze.  Justin Ruiz battled to the Bronze medal match but fell short.  We cheered loudly for each, an island of USA fans wearing red warm up jackets to stand out in a sea of Russians wearing black, gray, and brown.

Exploring the Hotel Cosmos

Matt Oney and I met all the security guards in the hotel as we wandered around.  We had been pleased that the hotel advertised a full modern gym, only to learn it cost $25 (800 ruples) a day to workout (Matt’s doing push ups and crunches on our hotel room floor as I write this so you already know what we decided to do).  We asked the attractive but unhappy and hard-voiced lady at the reception area whether we could look around the gym and she reluctantly said yes.  It was clean, modern, and empty, as one might expect at the price of admission.  Matt and I were about to go in one room when the receptionist came running and yelling, “No!  No! That is lady dressing room!”  She then suggested it was time for us to leave.