MAKUHARI, Japan — After enduring five years of pain and anxiety that dared her to quit wrestling, Adeline Gray is six tantalizing minutes away from finally pinning down her dream of bringing a gold medal back to Denver.
“You never know what’s going to happen at the Olympics. It’s a different attitude, it’s a different energy,” Gray said Sunday. “People come to wrestle. They come to game … So I’m just glad I was able to light up the stage.”
Now, at the end of a long and winding road back to the Games after the bitter disappointment of failing to medal at Rio de Janeiro in 2016, there’s one more delicious plot twist: Gray has to beat one of her best friends in the sport to finish the job.
Her foe is Aline Rotter Frocken. Go ahead, I dare you to try to say the names of the combatants three times fast! I must advise, however, that you not attempt it in the presence of impressionable children.
In the tight-knit sisterhood of international wrestling, Gary and Rotter Frocken are close enough to be twins. But a gold medal cannot be split down the middle, so this match is going to be as intense as sibling rivalry.
“I invited her to my wedding,” said Gray, who has competed against Rotter Frocken since both 30-year-old women were teenagers. “So I’ve got to get my game face on.”
While breaking Rotter Frocken’s heart is the last thing Gray wants to do, it won’t stop her from taking the German down hard to the mat.
“We are good friends. And we’re always joking that we want to meet each other in the Olympic finals,” Rotter Frocken said. “I know she won’t try to kill my body.”
Gray has been chasing this dream too long to let friendship get in the way of her goal. After injury wrecked her plans to win gold in Brazil, she grunted through nearly three years of physical duress to fully rehab a busted shoulder.
When the pandemic delayed the 2020 Summer Games and her planned retirement for 12 months, Gray also deferred plans to start a family with her husband, Damaris Sanders — among the contingent of loved ones rising before dawn back in Colorado to watch her wrestle in Japan.
Reaching the finals of the Olympic tournament is an all-day slog. Gray walked away victorious from the mat three times Sunday inside a dimly lit exhibition hall next to an outlet mall on the outskirts of Tokyo. It took eight tense hours, a long time to stew between each match’s six minutes of unscripted fury. That’s not easy, not in the least.
“I have some bad-ass wrestlers in this weight class,” Gray said.
OK, she did make short work of Zaineb Sghaier of Tunisia in the opening bout, recording a pin in 2 minutes, 11 seconds. Quarterfinal opponent Yasemin Adar, the 2017 world champ from Turkey, proved trickier. Gray raced to a 6-0 lead, then had to fend off her foe’s closing fury of desperation to escape with a two-point victory.
Then things really got hot at Makuhari Messe Hall during the semifinal match. It began as five minutes of strangely awkward pushing and shoving, then ended with 60 frantic seconds that forced Gray to make a 911 call to every ounce of survival instinct in her 168-pound body.
“It was a little bit closer than I expected it to be,” Gray admitted.
When 22-year-old Aiperi Medet Kyzy of Kyrgyzstan initially seemed more inclined to slap Gray on the noggin than engage in any meaningful combat, the pride of Bear Creek High School was awarded a point in punishment of her foe’s passive-aggressive tactics.
Gray increased her lead to 2-0 when she forced Kyzy to step out just before the contest’s halfway point. Guilty of milking the clock instead of attacking, Gray was forced to scramble to avoid a takedown, and when her precarious position was waved off with no points to Kyzy, the call for video review was made from the Kyrgystan corner.
The cost of a failed challenge in wrestling is a point. And that point, which put Gray ahead 3-0 with 64 seconds remaining on the clock, was what saved her, as she got caught in a hold that caused her to hop on one foot and ultimately surrender a two-point takedown late in the match.
“Your heart rate’s up in a wrestling match, so I’m not going to say it’s not,” admitted Gray, who gutted out the final 15 seconds on her feet to preserve a 3-2 victory. “But I don’t panic.”
Now, Gray must beat the Rotter Frocken out of a longtime friend to win gold. Truth is stranger, as they say. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
“It’s like a movie,” Rotter Frocken said.
You might want to pack a hankie for the final scene.
Here’s betting the winner and loser both cry in each other’s arms, with hugs so tight their hearts beat as one.
