Wharton Olympians Show Their 'Medal'
By Robert Strauss
A Wrestler, a Rower and a Fencer
Report on Victory, Defeat and
Lessons Learned
Brandon Slay was in an emotional quandary as he
lay on Bondi Beach in Sydney a couple of days after
the Summer 2000 Olympics.
On the one hand, the 25-year-old Slay, W'98,
had only days before won the silver medal in the
freestyle wrestling 167 1 /2-pound weight class, a wonderful
culmination of a lifetime of sweating, pain
and determination.
But the silver medal came with a lot of frustration.
Slay felt he lost in the finals to Alexander Leipold of
Germany, 4-0, because of a series of bad calls by officials.
And when the referee grabbed for Slay's hand
at the end of the match, Slay refused to let him raise
it in the usual Olympic salute. For that slight of
sportsmanship, international competitors and coaches
chided him, and the New York Times headline
about the story read, "Forget the Close Calls: The
U.S. Team Finds It Hard to Be Gracious in Defeat."
"I have to admit I didn't get over it initially," says
Slay, who spent the time after the Olympics with
Brandon Brown, his best friend from his hometown
of Amarillo, Texas. "My friend and I talked a lot and
I asked God to help me figure out what I should learn
from the experience."
When Slay arrived back in Amarillo, there was a
town parade down the main streets for him. High
school bands and cheerleaders led the way.
"That was wonderful. That's what showed me
how true the support was in my hometown," says
Slay. "Even if I would have come back without a
medal, that would have been there."
And then an amazing thing happened. On Oct.
23, more than three weeks after he fought his final
match, Leipold was declared ineligible because he
had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
Slay was awarded the gold medal. Though Slay says
he surely would have rather won the medal on the
mat, he also saw positives in winning it this way.
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