THE TRIALS... 1980 Gable was very canny in his way of getting me to ask myself why they beat me, what they did to win, and what I didn’t do. I recognized that in wrestling both Peterson and Campbell, that I was fortunate the first time around with each of them. The next times, they caught-on to me and beat me because they were more disciplined and had sounder technical skills. I remember the scene at Brockport when we understood that we were definitely not going to participate in the Games. Gene Mills took the news particularly hard – as did Campbell and Chuck Yagla. These guys were on top of their game, were cutting a lot of weight and knew that this was probably their last chance to wrestle in the Olympics. It was very sad to see that they had set their sights on a goal, they worked so hard for it and made it – and then that goal was taken away from them. The whole atmosphere after the final round-robin was a true sense of loss. Chris Campbell remembers his experiences: I started wrestling at the YMCA while in grade school. In seventh grade I played basketball, but wasn’t particularly good at it, so I went out for wrestling. In ninth and tenth grade I was on the JV team at Westfield [New Jersey] high school, but didn’t wrestle the next year since my mother wouldn’t let me compete. I did, however, workout with some junior college wrestlers. I was always quick and that year my strength really developed. When my mom did finally sign the waiver allowing me to wrestle for Westfield my senior year, I went undefeated and won the states, pinning all 26 of my opponents. I went to the Junior Nationals in my senior year, 1973, and finished 2nd to Mark Johnson. I accepted a ‘walk-on’ invitation from Dan Gable to wrestle at the University of Iowa. Richie Sofman, then the coach at Montclair State, tried to recruit me but once I told him that I didn’t want to go to Montclair State, he told me to go wrestle for Gable. When I got to Iowa in the fall of ’73 it was a huge culture shock. It was really different from New Jersey in several aspects. There was the college party life which I never saw before; also, I was a black kid in a very white Midwest envi126 Wrestlers At The Trials
ronment. The University of Iowa didn’t have black wrestlers. However, the coaches, Gable and J Robinson, were so good it made up for all the other distractions. They were both geniuses in their own rights. I wrestled as a freshman on the Iowa team in ’74 at 177. I had a good year, winning the Big Ten tournament and being voted the Outstanding Wrestler. However, at the NCAAs, I lost in the first round to a guy from Rutgers – my home state – and was eliminated. That was terrible. The following year, I made it to the NCAA finals which were held at Princeton University, not far from my hometown. I lost to Mike Lieberman by a point. That really upset me, but I came back to win the NCAAs my junior and senior year. After graduation, I got my first taste of international wrestling when I made the US team for the ’77 Worlds in Switzerland. I really didn’t understand the significance of the Worlds and finished a disappointing 5th. I didn’t wrestle smart; I didn’t think; I just wasn’t focused. During the next two years, I wrestled in Freestyle tournaments off-and-on but the big turning point for me was when Harold Nichols offered me the job as an assistant wrestling coach for the ’79-’80 season. Iowa State was a more favorable environment for a black guy like me. They were accustomed to recruiting good black wrestlers and I felt comfortable there. I had some great training partners, particularly Willie Gadson. I changed my habits, became a vegetarian and really focused on the upcoming Trials. I felt that by 1980, I had pulled far ahead of anyone in my weight class. What spurred me on was the feeling that in the past few years, I had been losing some close matches due to stalling calls. I thought that maybe those stalling calls were racially biased. I decided that I needed to train myself to beat the other guys so badly that I couldn’t get screwed by a racist call. I knew that I couldn’t afford to keep the score close and I needed to beat everyone by at least ten points. I won the National AAU freestyle tournament at Madison, beating Mark Lieberman, 23-6 in the finals. I then went back to Madison for the Trials and defeated John Peterson to win the tournament. At Brockport, again Peterson was my toughest competition. In our first bout
THE TRIALS... 1980
Chris Campbell and John Peterson fought it out for the 180.5 Olympic slot Photograph by Scott Conroe, courtesy of Amateur Wrestling News
it was close as John hit me with a crotch lift and when he took me to the mat I thought he almost broke my neck. I squeaked by him in that match and then beat him convincingly in our second match to make the Olympic team. I was incredibly angry at President Carter for sacrificing the ambitions of many American athletes for what was an empty justice. Carter was a coward, which is a polite way to state how I felt. John Peterson has his say: After the ’76 Olympics, Ben and I set one more goal. We wanted to win a gold medal in the World championships. Well, we didn’t achieve that; the closest we got was my silver in ’79. So we decided to give the Olympics one last shot. We were both over 30 years-old and knew going in that this would be our last competition.
Before the Trials started I knew that we were going to boycott the Olympics and that made it tough to get motivated. Plus my wife was very pregnant and that was on my mind. See, I got my excuses. I had been out in California working with the Athletes-In-Action team and in the spring of ’80 I came back to the Midwest to start some intense training. I really don’t recall much of the Trials tournament in Madison other than it was held at the old Field House on the University campus which was very familiar to me. That’s where I had wrestled in the high school state tournament about 15 years earlier. Anyway, I finished 2nd to Chris Campbell. I remember our Brockport matches much more vividly. In our first match, we ended up tied, but Chris was victorious because I had received more points on penalties that were called for his Wrestlers At The Trials 127