The world championships of Olympic-style wrestling have taken Adeline Gray to far-flung locales including Turkey, Hungary and Uzbekistan. She has returned from those odysseys with two gold medals and two bronze over the past four years.
This week the Bear Creek High School graduate gets to compete for her third gold without having to study any foreign language. The championships take place Monday through Saturday in Las Vegas, the first time the event has been held in the U.S. since 2003. Gray will be the defending champion when she competes Thursday, having won her second gold last year in Tashkent, Uzbekistan — almost 7,000 miles from Denver.
“I don’t even know if words can describe it. I just am so excited that I’m not having to travel 15 hours to get somewhere and only have one person that I recognize in the crowd,” said Gray, whose father, George, is a Denver police detective. “Just to have as many people that are going to show up and be excited about wrestling and be excited about the fact that it’s in the States is phenomenal. I’ll have my sister there and my parents and my boyfriend and a bunch of friends coming out. I just am really looking forward to having a great performance there.”
Gray, 24, won a gold medal this summer at the Pan American Games in Toronto, beating crowd favorite Justina Distasio of Canada in the gold medal match with a last-second point. Winning another world title Thursday in front of friends and family would be a career highlight, but in the back of her mind is the dream that drives her — becoming the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in wrestling.
Four Americans have won Olympic medals since women’s wrestling was introduced into the Summer Games in 2004, but the best result for an American was Sara McMann’s silver in 2004.
“She’s become the face of our program,” U.S. women’s head coach Terry Steiner said of Gray. “I think it’s very important for her to be the face of this program forever, and being the first Olympic gold medalist would do that. She’d be etched in stone forever.”
Gray mentioned that as a goal after being asked what she thinks about MMA star Ronda Rousey, and whether she might go that route someday.
“I really don’t know what the cards hold after this,” Gray said. “I have some pretty cool, pretty big goals ahead of me, of winning an Olympic gold medal. Right now that’s where my mind’s at.”
Rousey won a bronze medal in judo at the 2008 Olympics before turning to mixed martial arts in 2010.
“She’s a tremendous athlete,” Gray said. “She was able to medal on the Olympic stage and then make a very successful career in MMA. Right now no one can touch her. The fact that she is out there dominating is really an inspiration to keep winning.”
Confidence and single-mindedness are the qualities that set Gray apart, Steiner said.
“I’ve been coaching a long time, and you just don’t get many athletes that have so much belief in themselves,” Steiner said. “The second thing is attention to detail, really knowing her body, knowing what she needs and then following through. A lot of people know what to do and know what they need, but it’s another thing doing it. She’s a professional athlete, she stays on course and doesn’t let anyone take her off of that. Those two things together are pretty lethal.”
There’s another reason these world championships will be special. Her boyfriend, Damaris Sanders, is a captain in the Army who recently returned from a 10-month deployment in Kosovo. He will be with her this week in Las Vegas.
“After that he will be, hopefully, coming to the Olympics with me if he’s not deployed,” Gray said. “That’s where I’m crossing my fingers.”
John Meyer: jmeyer@denverpost.com or
