June
16, 2008: The Salt Lake Tribune
Beijing Dream Slips from Ruiz's Grasp
by Michael C. Lewis
LAS VEGAS — Justin Ruiz was pulling with
everything he had, every ounce of strength and every pound
of dedication. With mere seconds left in his final bout at
the U.S. Olympic Trials for wrestling on Sunday night, he
needed desperately to pull Adam Wheeler off the mat and
score a point.
The former three-time state champion from
Taylorsville levered himself against Wheeler's sagging
body weight . . . six . . . pulling hard to execute a flip
. . . five . . . a turn . . . four . . . anything at all
that would validate years of hard work and grueling
training to reach the Beijing Olympics.
"I heard somebody yell, 'Seven seconds!' "
Wheeler recalled later. "And Justin almost lifted me up in
the air. I was like, 'No!' "
Ruiz had Wheeler halfway in the air —
halfway to China, really — but, at last, could pull no
longer.
With his wife and parents and nearly two
dozen other relatives and friends watching from the stands
at the Thomas & Mack Center, Ruiz's resolve finally broke
and Wheeler crashed to the floor, exhausted but secure in
knowing that he - and not Ruiz, the five-time defending
Greco-Roman national champion - will be going to the
Olympics.
"Before the match was even over, I felt
Justin start crying on my back," Wheeler said.
Three . . .
Two . . .
One . .
While Wheeler rose and thrust his fists
into the air in celebration of another trials upset when
the clock hit zero, Ruiz crumpled to the mat on all fours,
sobbing uncontrollably. It was the second time he had
fallen just one victory short of the Olympics, after
losing the championship match of the trials four years
ago.
Tears streamed down his face as Ruiz stood
for the announcement that Wheeler had won, and they kept
coming as he staggered back to the locker room.
"One inch," he said later, his eyes still
red. "One inch away. If my lock would have been one inch a
little bit tighter, I think I would have been able to get
the leverage to score there. I thought I had it, but when
I started to go up, it slipped a little."
And just like that, Ruiz lost his grip on
the one thing for which he had trained since missing the
2004 Athens Games. He acknowledged this week that he
probably would not have kept wrestling had he made it to
those Olympics, and said he had envisioned himself many
times wrestling in the finals of the Olympic Trials.
"I'm just trying to make the images in my
head match up with reality," he'd said.
Now, he can't be sure whether he'll ever
get another chance. The former world bronze medalist did
not leave his shoes at the center of the mat to signal his
retirement, nor did he say with certainty - as did his
mother, Carrie — that he will be back again to take a shot
at the 2012 London Games.
"I'll probably sit back and take some time
to evaluate right now," he said.
Ruiz had lost the first match of the
best-of-three championship at 211.5 pounds when he was
unable to score on Wheeler in the decisive third period -
each match is divided into three two-minute periods, and a
wrestler must win two of them to win the match — but won
the next with a big reversal in the second period.
That left him with one final match between
him and Beijing.
Six minutes, at the most, against a man
he'd beaten three times for national championships.
The wrestlers split the first two periods,
and fought evenly through the first half of the decisive
one. But after Wheeler, who had wrestled through a
mini-tournament during the day to earn his title shot,
lifted Ruiz to score a point, Ruiz needed to score in the
final 30 seconds to win. He pulled and pulled and pulled,
the crowd roaring louder and louder as the final seconds
ticked away, but simply could not muster enough to earn a
chance to follow in the footsteps of Cael Sanderson and
Rulon Gardner, two local Olympic gold medalists who
watched the drama from the stands.
"It's hard to put into words, other than
I'm disappointed," Ruiz said. "I've trained so hard for
this. And tonight, looking back, hindsight, there are
things I could have done here and there. But I felt like I
was giving it everything I could at the moment."
His voice cracked.
"Would have liked to have won."
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