BEIJING — Imagine playing in overtime in an NFL conference championship game when a whistle blows. The referees confer, emerge from their huddle, point at you and tell you that you’ve lost.
Because of a delay-of-game penalty.
That was pretty much the ballgame for Brian Olson during Wednesday’s Olympic men’s judo competition. The Boulder resident, who retired after the 2004 Games, only to unretire to compete in a fourth Olympiad, was 10 seconds away from winning his opening-round 198-pound match against Diego Rosati of Argentina.
The Argentine then threw Olson for a yuko, tying the score.
That led to sudden death overtime, or, in judo parlance, Golden Score. Just over a minute into the extra session, the referee and judges unanimously decided that Olson was stalling and awarded a point to Rosati.
And with that, Olson was headed home.
That led to another very NFL-like scenario, the loser stating that he had to “go back and look at the tapes” to realize why he was sent packing.
“When you’re out there, it’s hard to tell sometimes whether you’re stalling or not, because your body is going through so many different things,” Olson said. “I’ll look at it, but the referees were unanimous on it, so I’ll have to go with what they said.”
Looking at another very American discipline, any NBA fan knows that more often than not, the officials tend to swallow their whistles and let the players decide the outcome. And U.S. officials say, depending on the draw, that very well could have been the case Wednesday. It was just Olson’s tough luck that he drew his sport’s equivalent of NBA ref Steve Javie, putting a rather abrupt — and anticlimactic — end to his brief stay.
It certainly wasn’t what Olson, the manager of a fitness facility in Fort Collins, had in mind a year ago when he decided to give judo one last try. That decision wasn’t an easy one. For one thing, Olson and his wife, Kimberly, were preparing to start a family. Their son, Bryce, is due in December.
Another factor, the 35-year-old admits, was whether he wanted to go through the arduous process of physically preparing himself to perform at the highest level of a sport that is part martial arts and part sumo wrestling.
“That’s the hardest part of coming back,” Olson said. “It’s very demanding physically. You’re getting thrown. Your body’s contorting all over the place. You have to be in the best shape possible to be ready to have all your matches in one day.”
After not getting the results he wanted early on, Olson said, he considered giving up. But soon he turned it around, winning the U.S. Open last October.
“The best part of my life is being out on the mat. Nothing compares to it,” Olson said. “I definitely don’t regret coming back. I’m the oldest guy to ever make the U.S. judo team. That right there says a lot. But I didn’t come out of retirement just to make the team.”
That was the end result however, all because, Olson said, he was unable to stick to his game plan. Which was simple. Prevent Rosati from dropping to his knees and grasping the lapel on Olson’s uniform. That’s the precursor to the Argentine’s favorite move, the one he used to throw Olson in the waning seconds and tie the match.
“If you get too confident, it usually turns around and bites you,” Olson said. “Sometimes, you have to get smarter when you get older, and I wasn’t as smart as I needed to be today.
“I put everything I had into it. It just wasn’t in the cards.”
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com
