I had the opportunity to talk with Icho Kaori this summer. For those that don’t know about her, she is a 4x Olympic Gold medalist. She was gold at 4 consecutive olympic events starting in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016. I believe it’s the first for any female to win gold in four consecutive olympic events.
I was lucky to work as a translator for her group visiting the bay area and we sat across from each other during lunch one day. In our conversation I asked her if she had any wrestling idol’s that she looked up to as a student of the sport. She didn’t mention any names but she did say she liked to watch film on different wrestlers, especially of those is felt aspired to imitate to learn from. I was intrigued because I had (and sometimes still do) study film to learn a new or different technique. This is a common practice for many that find entertainment in watching great technique in action or learning a technical position or movement. What was interesting was the conversation that followed.
Icho said in addition to studying the technique, she also like to watch the strategy involved in the match. “Who goes for the first point.” “How does someone comeback from losing.” “How do they shut the door on someone trying to comeback from behind.” I was intrigued. I had never thought to study match strategy. The psychological battle of the mind to score in the beginning or score in the end. The method of coming back from a deficit. This aspect of the game was just as important as having crisp technique. I realized then that to Icho wrestling was not just a study of positions but also the study of tactical strategy as well.
Tactics combined with technical understanding is her prowess. Wrestling often confines the battle into, technique, power, speed, stamina, and mental toughness, but I realized that there is one more significant area that isn’t talked about very much. That is the tactical strategy of a match. Not just scoring and defending, but a higher level of strategy of when to score, how to set up an attack on a defensive opponent, etc. It was such a simple thing, but I was in shock that I had never approached the game from that perspective. That’s some high level thinking worthy of 4 olympic gold medals.
Eliot Kelly