Blue White Illustrated

September 2021

Penn State Sports Magazine

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S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 4 9 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M T echnical Fall Taylor turned in a Magic Man performance during the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Too much? Perhaps. But then again, David Taylor was more than any of his opponents could handle. On Aug. 5, the St. Francis, Ohio, na- tive became Penn State's first wrestling alumnus to win an Olympic gold medal. Taylor tore through the competition during the first three rounds in Tokyo before showcasing his trademark de- termination to convert a double-leg takedown with 10 seconds left, beating 2016 gold medalist and previous world champion Hassan Yazdani Charati of Iran, 4-3, in the championship bout at 86 kilograms (190 pounds). Nittany Nation knows what Taylor is all about. He won a pair of NCAA titles at Penn State (2012 and 2014) and was named the Dan Hodge Trophy winner as the country's best wrestler in both years while compiling a 134-3 record in a blue-and-white singlet. Winning at every level was always the driving factor for Taylor. He told GoP- SUSports.com that when he was 8 years old, he wrote down a goal of winning at the Olympics. By the time he was ready for college, he was con- vinced that the team of Cael and Cody Sanderson, plus Casey Cun- ningham, could help him reach his loftiest collegiate and international aspirations. It was only fitting, then, that all three Penn State coaches were in- side the Makuhari Messe Hall when Taylor took down Yazdani. He stayed put until the horn sounded, and then dropped to his knees in celebration be- fore touring the building with an Amer- ican flag draped around his neck. A gold medal replaced the flag a few minutes later as "The Star Spangled Banner" played while he stood atop the tallest podium in wrestling. "I've always had international aspira- tions, so it's exciting to be here with this staff and have the opportunity to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States with this coaching staff I went to college with," Taylor told reporters via Zoom prior to competing in Tokyo. Mission accomplished. To understand how Taylor reached the sport's pinnacle, you have to under- stand what led him to the moment. He first took up wrestling when the family lived in Wyoming and struggled at first but eventually found his groove. There was always one key to it all, according to a Blue White Illustrated story from 2012. "We're not going to be like the other kids," David Taylor Sr. told his son be- fore his first tournament as a 7-year- old. "You have to tech fall the guy." Quentin Tarantino couldn't have come up with that kind of foreshadow- ing. Competing in the Olympics for the first time, Taylor topped his first three opponents by "technical superiority." Unlike in college, where a 15-point lead stops the match, only 10 points are re- quired in freestyle wrestling, but the bigger margin could have been achieved if needed. Taylor defeated his oppo- nents in the first round, quarterfinals and semifinals by a combined score of 33-2 before running into Yazdani. The Iranian wrestler led throughout most of the gold medal match but couldn't fend off Taylor's drive, literally, as he exploded forward for the winning score. Afterward, Taylor explained to re- porters what he was thinking going into the match's final moments. He told himself, "I'm going to squeeze this gut wrench, and I hope we don't go back to our feet." Was it the ideal bout for the 30-year- old? No, but a lifetime of training has taught Taylor that while scoring is great, winning is better. "I like to win 10-0," he told reporters, "but getting it done in the last seconds feels pretty good, too." Taylor added, "I think he only tried three times to score. I always say that if you want to be the best in the world, you need to take people down twice. You need to get two takedowns. Tonight was a good example of that. I needed two takedowns." There was no crowd, of course, be- cause of the pandemic restrictions that Japan had put in place shortly before the Games began, but Penn State fans around the world were joyous, as was NBC commentator Jordan Bur- roughs. An Olympic gold medalist himself, Burroughs had previously been the one standing in the way of Taylor's Olympic goals. The respect in his voice was clear for a wres- tler who had waited his turn and overcame a crushing knee injury in 2019 before battling back to get to this point. "It's a movie," Burroughs said. Taylor dreamed of this scene, and he didn't just rise to the occasion, but rather launched himself over it. "I've always had aspirations to win an Olympic gold medal, so it's pretty excit- MAGIC MOMENT Penn State great David Taylor achieves his Olympic dream with a dramatic victory at the Summer Games G R E G P I C K E L | G P I C 9 2 @ G M A I L . C O M "There was no way I wasn't going to find a way. It's the gold medal, man. I was going to rip my arms off if I had to." D A V I D T A Y L O R

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