BEIJING — Three months ago he was just a promising Greco-Roman wrestling prospect, a kid who impressed national team coaches because he would come to Colorado Springs to train with the big boys when he had a break from his high school in Minnesota.
Nobody was thinking Jake Deitch- ler, wrestling at 145.5 pounds, would be on the Beijing Olympic team. Even he didn’t see that coming. But on Wednesday the 18-year-old will become the youngest U.S. Olympic wrestler since 1976. Deitchler earned the distinction by defeating two-time world medalist Harry Lester at the Olympic Trials.
“If there’s any guy I thought could win a gold medal here, Harry Lester was the guy,” said national team coach Steve Fraser, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist. “For Jake to upset him says so much, because Harry Lester is the real deal.”
Super heavyweight Dremiel Byers calls Deitchler “Kid Dynamite.”
And when the Olympics are over, he’s going to begin classes as a freshman at the University of Minnesota.
“There’s always been something inside me, I don’t know what it is, saying, ‘I don’t want to tread the path everybody else has,’ ” Deitchler said. “I want to make a name for myself. Starting my career off by making this team really was a great way to do that.”
When the USA Wrestling media staff asked team members to name the person they would most like to meet, living or dead, Deitchler didn’t pick a wrestling icon, such as Dan Gable or Dave Schultz. He chose Steve Prefontaine, the James Dean of American distance running who died in an automobile crash in 1975. He says “Without Limits,” one of the films made about Pre, is his favorite flick.
“Steve Prefontaine was a young athlete who set, for his age group, world records,” Deitchler said. “That was motivating to me, to see he had that attitude even at a young age, that he could compete with the best.”
Deitchler started traveling to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to train with the resident athletes there when he was a junior at Anoka (Minn.) High School. Those trips told the national team staff a lot about his desire to be great.
“We always encourage all of our juniors to come out,” Fraser said. “We have other juniors who do that, but nobody as dedicated as him, and as much. He literally won a state championship, and like the next day he flew to Colorado Springs to train.”
He is tattooed with Chinese characters for God, warrior and wrestler, but his parents made him earn them.
“I’m not a kid that just wants to get some tattoos,” Deitchler said. “I told my parents when I was 15, I wanted one. They said, ‘You make your first world team, you can get a tattoo.’ I was 17, made a (junior) world team, got my tattoo. Then they said, ‘The only way you can get another one is when you make an Olympic team.’ Sure enough, I surprised them and made one a few months later. Now I’m getting another one.”
This time it will be the Olympic rings.
