Continued from page 8 Steiner has coached Elena Pirozhkova to a silver medal at the World Championships. Tony Rotundo photo.
vidually, I know we could’ve done better. How did you view the individual per- formances of the seven U.S. athletes who competed in Turkey? At 48 kilos, Clarissa Chun went to three clinches in the match she needed to win to get to the bronze-medal match. If she wins that match, I think she goes on to win the bronze medal. If Clarissa is going to lose a match, it should be 6-5 or 8-7. For her to go to three clinches and not score a point, that shouldn’t happen with her potential to score points. She can’t be in those types of matches. She had a tough draw and wrestled well up until that point, but she didn’t quite close it out.
At 51 kilos, I don’t think we wrestled anywhere close to where we are capable. Whitney Conder, maybe she was a little shell-shocked because it was her first World Championships. But Whitney’s been around too long to do that. We are
better than that. She’s been around those foreign athletes and she can compete with those athletes.
At 55 kilos, Helen Maroulis had a great tournament. She fell short of getting a medal. She lost to (Saori) Yoshida of Japan, who is a great champion. Helen can wrestle with her and I know she can beat her. And then in the bronze-medal match with Sweden, it was a contrast of styles. If we can get to that girl’s legs, we can pick her apart. That was a tough weight. There were 48 people in that weight class, so for Helen to qualify that weight for the Olympics that was great to see.
At 59 kilos, we were disappointed and I know Kelsey Campbell was disappointed. We thought we had a great shot to win it. Kelsey showed great consistency throughout the year and was looking strong going into the Worlds. She wres- tled someone she had beaten pretty handily and tried to win a close match. It
bit her in the butt at the end because she let it stay closer than it should have been. The girl was a former silver medalist, but that was a match we should’ve won. I really thought we could win that weight class. Kelsey will drop down to 55 kg and she will be in the mix in that weight class at the Olympic Trials.
At 63 kilos, Elena Pirozhkova has been there before. We have had some prob- lems this year against some of the top people. We’ve been shutting down for some reason. Elena is too good to not win medals. She’s just too good and works too hard. She qualified the weight for the Olympics, but she’s capable of way more than that. She is good enough to win the Olympics. At 67 kilos, we thought Adeline Gray could win the weight class. We lost to China in the first match, but we got pulled back in when China made the finals. I didn’t think Adeline was as ready as she Continued on page 10
USA Wrestler 9
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