Justin Lester recorded a pin over Japan’s Yuji Okamoto in the 2011 Dave Schultz Memorial finals. Larry Slater photo. Continued from page 6
are much older,” said Lester, the youngest of six children. “She was closer to being my sister than my actual sisters, so that was real hard. I was always close with [ShawRica and Savannah] growing up. We grew up in the same household. So I would like to accomplish this for both of them.”
Lester still has plenty of family support. “My dad and my sister are at every tournament,” he said. “They jump in the car and drive to wherever. If I have a tournament in California and they can’t get a flight in time, they’ll jump in the car. I can tell them two days before, and they’ll drive straight out.”
As if that is not incentive enough, Lester has still another reason to triumph in London.
“The only thing I can think about, hon-
estly, since I’ve had my daughter, is tak- ing a picture with my gold medal around her neck,” Lester said of Zuriana, his 2- year-old daughter. “When it comes down to it, I know my daughter is everything to me. So just putting that medal around her neck and letting her know …
“I think of giving everybody hand- shakes and hugs, and I’m sure there’s going to be tons of crying, but the only thing I can picture out of everything is putting it around her and holding her up and walking her around. That’s it.” Lester came close to competing in the 2008 Beijing Games, but he lost at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials to 18-year-old Jake Deitchler, the first high school wrestler to make the U.S. Olympic wrestling team in 32 years. Deitchler has since retired from wrestling after being sidelined by concus- sion issues.
Lester has been wrestling for 21 years. He realizes that winning at the World Championships is considered more diffi- cult than winning at the Olympics, where the fields are smaller but the pressure is immense.
“I’ve never been to an Olympics,” Lester said. “I’ve heard the World Championships, competition-wise, is a harder tournament, but at the Olympics you’ve got way more pressure on you. Obviously, the Olympics are more impor- tant to me. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t still
be going. That’s how I look at it.” Lester took a break after the 2009
World Championships to see what life offered beyond the mat.
“At the time, I wanted to try actually working and getting the rest of my life started,” he said. “The plan definitely was to come back and wrestle after I got everything settled in my life.” At the 2010 U.S. Open in Cleveland, Lester watched from the stands and began seriously considering joining the Army’s World Class Athlete Program squad. Shortly thereafter, he became a Soldier and donned the black and gold for his return to the mat.
Lester said the only other time he seri- ously considered joining the military was after he left Iowa State in 2003. At that time, he opted for training at the U.S. Olympic Education Center at Northern Michigan University, where he remained until 2009.
“I was young then, and the only thing I could think about was, ‘Oh, man, I might have to go to war and never ever get to wrestle again,’” Lester recalled. “But after Continued on page 8
USA Wrestler 7
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