Foxcatcher Read online

  It was either me or him. I chose me.

  I locked his arm, threw the move to break his grip, elevated him in the groin with the arm he had between his legs, and threw him head over heels. I expected Karabacak to do a front roll, giving me two points. Instead, he landed on his head, unexpectedly halting all his momentum. I kept his left arm locked and it continued over his head. I felt and heard Karabacak’s elbow pop. I knew right away he had broken a bone.

  Thirty seconds into the match, I pinned him. The home crowd, not having heard Karabacak’s elbow snap as I had, roared its approval. I raised my fists and walked off the mat, unsure of what to do, as the Turk remained on the floor and the ref calmly motioned for medical help.

  That was a weird moment. It’s unusual for that kind of injury to occur during a match. I certainly hadn’t tried to hurt Karabacak. The injury happened because of how he landed as I had his arm locked. But then again, I couldn’t show any weakness on the mat. Wrestling is a man’s game. Freak injuries—to you or your opponent—are always possible. Inherent in wrestling is the mutual agreement between opponents that they are about to attempt to commit battery on each other. Every wrestler risks injury. I suffered more injuries in wrestling than I could count, including numerous broken bones. I think I wrestled injured more often than uninjured.

  When Karabacak got injured, I couldn’t get out of my mind-set because of what had happened to him. I still had four more matches to go in the tournament.

  I also knew the ramifications. The top-ranked wrestler had just left the tournament; he wouldn’t be able to wrestle his way back to a chance at the gold medal.

  In the match right before mine, Dave had hurt the knee of a Yugoslavian while pinning him. Wrestling’s international governing body is the Fédération Internationale des Luttes Associées (FILA), or in English, the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles.

  The head of FILA, Milan Ercegan, happened to be from Yugoslavia. He had just watched, in back-to-back matches, the American Schultz brothers pin and send his fellow countryman to the hospital and knock another competitor out of the tournament. He assigned Head Official Mario Saletnik to watch my and Dave’s matches the rest of the tournament as a fourth official.

  I defeated a wrestler from Italy in my next match in my group later that night, under close scrutiny of the extra official. While waiting to weigh in, I went up into the seats to join Mom in watching Dave. While I was up there, the public address announcer said, “Mark Schultz has been disqualified from the match against Turkey.”

  Mom started freaking out next to me.

  “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my God!”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” I told her, got up, and walked away.

  Turkish officials had protested my victory, demanding that I be disqualified. Tape of the match was reviewed, and I was disqualified for “excessive brutality.”

  I knew there were two parts to the decision. First, did I win or lose the match? Second, would I be kicked out of the tournament? Because the announcer had only said I had been disqualified, I knew I could still wrestle and come back and win gold.

  Technically, the Turks should not have been allowed to protest because they didn’t file their protest until a couple of hours after the thirty-minute time limit for appeals had expired. In fact, FILA at first denied the Turks’ request. Then FILA reconsidered and ruled to disqualify me. If the Turks had filed in time, I probably would have been booted from the tournament.

  The move was illegal. I’ve never denied that. But it wasn’t an intentional breaking of the rules, and I definitely was not aiming to injure Karabacak. I didn’t talk to the media that night, but Gable gave a good explanation to reporters. With the arm at ninety degrees, he said, the move is legal. My hold started out legal. But the way the Turk landed caused me to take his arm past ninety degrees. At ninety-one degrees, the move became illegal and subject to the “excessive brutality” ruling.

  I respected Dan. Even though I defeated three of his guys from Iowa in the NCAA finals, I never got the feeling he didn’t like me.

  I didn’t talk to Dan at the arena after the announcement was made. Dave did, though.

  “They’re trying to turn this into a sissy sport,” my brother complained.

  I heard that the Turkish government, I believe it was, had promised Karabacak money or property or something like that of value if he had won gold. He said in a Turkish newspaper article that I had fouled him. Years later, I was talking with a journalist who said he would be seeing Karabacak soon. I signed a T-shirt for Karabacak with a note saying I hadn’t intended to hurt him and would like to be friends with him. I’ve never heard anything from the Turk, so I don’t know if the shirt made it to him.

  —

  With the disqualification, I knew I couldn’t lose either of my two remaining group matches and still have a shot at the gold-medal match. Chris Rinke, the confident autograph signer from Canada, was my next opponent.

  After a 2–2 tie in the first period, I started the second period with a takedown and gut wrench. The ref gave me one point for the takedown and two points for the gut wrench. The scoreboard showed me with a 5–2 lead. In freestyle, if a match ends in a tie, the tiebreaker is known as criteria. If all the points are scored on one-pointers, the wrestler with the last point scored wins. But if any two-point moves are scored, the wrestler with the last two-pointer wins.

  At that point, I had a three-point lead and had scored the last two-pointer. I could give Rinke three takedowns and still win on the criteria tiebreaker.

  Down three points, Rinke started attacking me like crazy and I got called for my final stalling warning. I couldn’t afford another stalling.

  Then I looked over at the scoreboard and my lead was 4–2, not 5–2. The mat judges had reversed the ref’s decision and awarded me one point, not two, for the gut wrench. That screwed up my calculations on what I needed to win. I thought I could give up two takedowns, instead of three, and still win on criteria. But I failed to take into account that with the subtracted point, all my scoring had come on one-pointers. If I gave up two takedowns, I would lose the tiebreaker.

  While I was refiguring my mental math as we wrestled, the ref yelled, “Passive, rouge!” or “Stalling, red!” for the color of my singlet. In my confusion, Rinke exploded with the exact same underhook to a limp arm that Karabacak had used to gain control of my leg. But unlike the Turk, Rinke executed perfectly for the takedown. My lead shrank to 4–3.

  That gave Rinke a huge energy burst. A full minute remained for him to get a takedown or a stalling call on me for the tie and, because of the tiebreaker, win. I was still thinking, however, that I could allow a takedown for a tie and win on the tiebreaker.

  Rinke was on top, trying to turn me. He couldn’t, and the ref stood us back to our feet. I had used all my stalling calls, and the ref yelled, “Passive, rouge!” again to warn me that he was about to call my final stalling penalty. Unlike most wrestlers I went against, Rinke opted for a standing restart. Rinke knew there would be a better chance to score on me from that position.

  Not only had Rinke scouted me, but Jim Humphrey—one of our assistant coaches at Oklahoma—had been hired as the Canadian freestyle head coach. Jim knew better than anyone my style and how adept I had become at preventing opponents from turning me in the down position. It shook me to know that someone who knew me that well was in the opposing corner, and I’m sure Jim instructed Rinke to not have me start down.

  I had to make a quick decision. I believed the refs had it out for the Schultz brothers and were looking for a way to get me out of the tournament. I had to do something. So I decided to shoot on Rinke’s legs and let him take me down, which also would serve the effect of killing most of the remaining time. So I shot in without first setting up. It was a terrible shot. I barely touched his leg.

  Rinke sprawled and locked his arms aro
und my body in a front body lock. I was waiting for him to spin behind, but our positioning caused me to change my mind. I had a move in my repertoire that had been unstoppable, a “duck scoop.” Instead of playing defensively, I decided to attack. I knew I could score with the duck scoop and that would give me even more time to stall if I needed to give away another takedown.

  I tripoded up onto all fours with my head down. Rinke held on to his body lock just long enough for me to feel an opening. I exploded, throwing my head up and my hips down as hard as I could. At that exact moment, Rinke felt the attack and let go of his grip. But it was too late. I spun behind him in half a second: 5–3; time ran out; I won despite the confusion.

  I then won an uneventful match, 16–5, against a wrestler from New Zealand to advance to the gold-medal match.

  —

  Dave’s gold-medal match was the night before mine, against Martin Knosp, the 1981 World Champion who had defeated Lee Kemp in the last Worlds.

  The refs were keeping a close eye for the Schultz front headlock, and the special off-the-mat judge had warned Dave three times in his previous match for holds around his opponent’s neck. His opponent was warned once for the same thing, so it was that kind of match.

  Every time Dave locked up Knosp in a headlock, the ref broke it up. One time, the ref stepped in and broke up a headlock by Dave and Knosp fell to his back as if he were choking, trying to draw a penalty against Dave. It didn’t work.

  With Dave having to wrestle without one of his best weapons, he broke a 1–1 tie with 1:37 remaining with a single point and then added two more scores, including a takedown with ten seconds left for a 4–1 win.

  I watched Dave win, but I wasn’t able to enjoy his gold-medal victory. I had too much pressure on my shoulders, and all I could afford to do with my final match the next day was focus on what I had to do to avoid losing.

  My last opponent was Hideyuki Nagashima from Japan, who advanced out of Group A. I had watched him in one match and, honestly, wasn’t impressed. With the Turk, me, and Rinke, the top three wrestlers all had drawn into Group B. I knew if I could just keep my head together for one final match, I could take home the gold.

  Right on the first whistle, I shot Nagashima and caught him in the face with an accidental head-butt. Three seconds in, he took a brief timeout to recover. Before the match, I had decided which techniques I would use against Nagashima. A football forearm shiver to a high-crotch followed by an inside leg trip took him down, and then a gut wrench gave me a quick 4–0 lead.

  Nagashima put me in a tough spot only once, when he attempted a headlock that slipped off. Other than that, I controlled the entire match, which wasn’t an entire match. A minute and fifty-nine seconds into the first round, the match ended on technical superiority with me leading 13–0.

  Backflip!

  I was a little winded as the ref raised my hand in victory. We didn’t even wrestle two minutes, but I had scored eight points in twenty-six seconds on a flurry of moves. I was not, however, too tired for my trademark backflip. After the ref raised my hand, I pumped my fist one time to the American partisan crowd, embraced Nagashima, and shook hands with his coaches, I walked over to my corner and did another backflip. Why not? An Olympic gold medal has to be worth two flips, doesn’t it?

  With my victory, Dave and I became the first brothers in US wrestling history to win Olympic gold medals. But only because Lou Banach won gold one match after mine. Like Dave, his brother Ed had won gold the previous day.

  I wish I could say I was overjoyed to win. But that wouldn’t be accurate. The TV broadcast of that match is on YouTube, and when I have watched it, I’ve noticed that I never smiled before TV broke away for commercial. The strongest emotion I felt was relief. Not exactly a gold-medal moment athletes dream of, but the weight of the world had just been lifted off me.

  The medals ceremony was actually rather odd. What separates the gold medalist from the winners of silver and bronze is that only the gold medalist hears his national anthem played. In college, I would get emotional hearing the anthem when it was played before matches. I used that emotion as a way to get psyched up. With my low max VO2, I had to find ways to create adrenaline, and anything I could use to create more emotion was a tool I needed in my belt. But at the Olympics, hearing the anthem after I was finished wrestling was completely different from my routine. As the anthem played, and the home crowd sang along, and the Stars and Stripes was raised in the arena, I didn’t know what to feel.

  I first realized the significance of that last match in a bathroom, of all places. Just as in the moments after winning the 1978 California state championship, I retreated to a bathroom to have a few minutes alone. My path to gold in the Olympic tournament was different, not to mention more interesting, than other wrestlers’ because of the disqualification and being forced to come back from an early loss. I don’t know if this is still the case, but I was told that I was one of only two men in Olympic wrestling history to lose a match and still win gold.

  When I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, I saw the recipient of a miracle. There had been the disqualification and the controversy surrounding that match, followed by the close scrutiny Dave and I were under in the rest of our matches. Then it had taken everything I could call up from within myself physically and mentally to defeat Chris Rinke. He was gunning for me hard.

  Then there were the comparisons to Dave. I knew before the tournament, as did many others, that he was going to win gold. Dave was the only reigning World Champion at the Games, and he was very good in 1984. No one in the world, whether he had come to Los Angeles or not, could have beaten him that year.

  But I didn’t think that Dave believed I was going to win. I didn’t know if I was going to win, either. That had been an inconsistent year for me. Sometimes the great Mark Schultz would show up, sometimes the lousy one would. And on our sport’s biggest stage, carrying the overbearing burdens of the expectations of the once-every-four-years US wrestling audience, I had kept the lousy Mark Schultz from popping up from wherever he had been showing himself without warning.

  Before leaving that bathroom, there was one thing I knew for sure: God had blessed me with a miracle.

  Dave and I didn’t have a conversation that night about both of us winning. We knew each other so well, we were so in sync with each other, that neither of us needed to share our thoughts to know that the other was relieved to survive that tournament with a gold medal to show for his perseverance in the fight.

  Now, I did have a celebration that night. Dave had his wife with him. I had my girlfriend with me, and Terry, a group of her friends, and I partied that night. We partied hard, too. If there were an Olympic gold medal for celebrating, we would have won it!

  —

  A large group of US medalists went on a three-city tour with parades and parties, and Dave and I were included. I wouldn’t have gone without Dave, but the tour turned out to be a blast. There were no rules on the flights. We didn’t have to buckle our seat belts, for one. On one takeoff, while the nose of the plane was higher than the tail, one athlete I didn’t know stood on a magazine at the front of the plane and “surfed” down the aisle. A volleyball player shook up a bottle of champagne and started spraying people. When he got me and Terry wet, I pushed him to the floor in fun.

  At one parade, I rode in a car with gymnast Mary Lou Retton, who’d won five medals, including gold for the individual all-around. Mary Lou was really nice, and getting to meet her and spend a little bit of time with her was cool. As a former gymnast and as the winner of a wrestling gold medal, I had an appreciation for how amazingly she performed in winning five medals.

  I want to say that parade was in Dallas. We were riding in the second convertible behind the first car with some city official. When we came to the point along the parade route where we were supposed to stop briefly, the city official got out of his car and walked back to ours. He d
idn’t say anything to Mary Lou or to me. Instead, he walked directly to Terry and said, “I’ve just got to ask who you are.” I’m telling you, Terry was good-looking enough to stop a parade.

  Being a gold medalist afforded me the opportunity to meet other great athletes, such as gymnast Peter Vidmar and track star Edwin Moses. I also met then–New York City mayor Ed Koch.

  My biggest thrill, however, came when President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, met with medalists at the Beverly Hills Hilton.

  Bob DeProspero, a member of the Secret Service, had a son, Bobby, who had been a wrestler at Oklahoma while Dave and I were there. Mr. DeProspero was the head of security under Reagan, and when the athletes were lining up to meet the Reagans, Mr. DeProspero spotted Dave and me in the middle of the line and shouted out, “Hey, Mark. Dave. Come on up here.” He motioned us through the velvet ropes to the front of the line.

  “Mr. President,” he said, “these are the guys I was telling you about.”

  That stunned me. Someone had told the president of the United States about us? Thanks to Mr. DeProspero, I was the first athlete to meet the president that day. We posed for photos, and I moved my head forward to give Mrs. Reagan a polite kiss on the cheek. She turned her head to the side at the same time and I kissed her right on the lips.

  I started to walk away, not sure what someone was supposed to do after planting one on the lips of the First Lady. Then I guess my dad’s comedic influence kicked in and I turned back to face the Reagans.

  “I’ll vote for you!” I said.

  “Say it louder!” Mrs. Reagan responded with a smile.

  —

  Olympic wrestling champions are given the official bracket sheet as a keepsake. I hung mine on a wall in my apartment. About a year later, I was looking at the bracket and reviewing the highlights of the tournament in my mind. That is when I realized for the first time that I would have lost the criteria tiebreaker to Rinke if I had allowed that final point instead of scoring on the duck scoop.