“The funny thing about sport or life is that you have to think of the first step, and then the next, and so on to reach the outcome, not the result itself, to succeed. A lot of people MAKE THE MISTAKE of being transfixed on getting a medal rather than on what you need to do to get there,” says Erica Wiebe in a chat with UTHRA GANESAN.
Wrestling, largely, is not something that evokes images of articulate, pretty young women. It is an intensely physical sport that, across the world in general and in India in particular, reeks of machismo and muscled up men moving around languidly. The advent of woman wrestlers into public consciousness — especially following the success of the Phogat sisters, Geeta and Babita,and the movie inspired by them — only reinforces the belief that they are, in some way, less feminine.
That is until you meet Erica Wiebe. The reigning Olympic champion is everything a woman is supposed to be — tall, lithe and with a flawless skin — and nothing that a wrestler is presumed to be. As part of the Pro Wrestling League here, the blonde Canadian has been one of the most-recognised faces on television, helped partly by her ever-agitated presence near the ring as captain of the Mumbai Maharathis and the fact that she is one of a handful of wrestlers conversant with English.
SITTING DOWN FOR AN interview with Sportstar, the 5’ 9” Canadian can’t stop smiling and laughing while recounting her experiences as a wrestler. Erica also speaks of how she shifted from football and how she loves to shatter the misconceptions around women in the sport.
“My goal forever was to move it to university in the USA and play football (she prefers to call it soccer to make sure there is no ambiguity vis-a-vis American football) there. I wrote my SATs in the 11th, I was talking to universities for scholarships even as I was wrestling more and more since the 9th, so for those years I was juggling both. And then I made my first national team in wrestling and travelled to Europe for a competition and I was hooked.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 28, 2017-Ausgabe von Sportstar.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 28, 2017-Ausgabe von Sportstar.
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