The Silent Gladiators

Nicholas A. Hopping was hired by the United States Olympic Commitee as a journalism intern for the 2004 Olympics. He lived at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs; and he covered the making and breaking of the 2004 U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team and its Countdown to the Athens Olympic Games.

Excerpt from The Silent Gladiators. "He never learned anything until he was tired, so he knew it, he knew it all too well, he knew what the moment called for, he knew he had to be hard, he had to cut off the part of him that wanted to quit, that wanted to walk away from the match, find a quiet corner in the locker room and be by himself, where no one was cheering for or against him, where no pressure existed, where he didn't have to be hard, where he didn't have to continue fighting, where he didn't have to be a champion.he knew about this place of peace and solitude.but the gladiator decided that he wanted nothing to do with it, that he didn't want to hide out in the locker room, that he did not want to relax and sit in the stands, that he wanted to be a participant and not an observer, that he wanted to be out on the mats, out where the action was, where the juice was, where he could ride the edge of victory and defeat with every twist and turn, with every action and reaction because he had once watched the battle in the arena wondering silently to himself, wondering why he wasn't out there, why the crowd wasn't cheering for him, wondering whether he had it in him, so he took the challenge and now he was on the mats, in the thick of wrestling's eternal inner struggle, and so he knew he had to be hard and not give in to fatigue, not worry about his scorched lungs, because he surely knew that he would rather pass out from exhaustion, fall face-down right here on the mat, than be sitting in those stands silently relieved of never having to face the gauntlet that the mat, the sport presented in himself."