Sign up for Newsletters and Alerts

Sign up for Newsletters and Alerts

Two days before traveling to Tokyo for the Summer Olympics, Gable Steveson was playing one of those concocted games often seen in a high school gym class.

The Gophers wrestling room was serving a dual purpose as the padded field for a game of “speed ball” before the real practice began on July 15. The wrestlers had divided into two teams — shirts vs. skins — and their heavyweight wasn’t a lumbering also-ran.

At one point in the rec game, a shirtless 275-pound Steveson went across the middle and made a juggling catch before quickly zipping a pass to a teammate for an easy score.

Uncle Kraker, of all music, played on the sound system during the game:

Everything is all right I’ll be the one to tuck you in at night And if you want to leave I can guarantee You won’t find nobody else like me

That song was released the year Steveson was born — 2000 — and the lyrics can be construed to fit him. The first Gophers wrestler to make the Olympics in the freestyle division doesn’t have many peers. Steveson is the 11th Olympian overall in program history, and the first since Jake Deichtler at the Beijing Olympics in 2012, the Gophers said.

U wrestling coach Brandon Eggum saw Steveson make that athletic play in “speed ball” and couldn’t help but marvel. “Look at that,” Eggum said. “He’s got great hands.”

The Apple Valley native plans to use the athleticism he’s displayed on the wresting mat when he competes in the 125-kilogram division at Makuhari Messe Hall in Chiba, Japan on Wednesday and Thursday. The medal matches are Friday.

Steveson dominated heavyweight wresting in the U.S. last season, winning Big Ten and NCAA championships; he was co-winner of the Dan Hodge Trophy going to the nation’s best individual. The 21-year-old then dominated at the U.S. Olympic Trials, but will be an underdog this week in Japan.

Turkey’s Taha Akgul, 30, is the defending Olympic gold medalist from the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. Geno Petriashvili, 27, of Georgia defeated Akgul to win the world championship in 2019 and is the No. 1 seed in this field. Since 2014, only these two men have won Olympic or world gold medals.

Kazakhstan’s Yusup Batirmurzaev is No. 2 seed; Akgul is No. 3: and Ukraine’s Oleksandr Khotsianivskyi is No. 4. Iranian Amir Hossein Zare, 21, is another unseeded up-and-comer like Steveson.

“If Gable has a shootout on his feet, I feel like he is the best in the world,” Eggum boasted. “They have never wrestled a guy like him who moves the way he does and competes the way he does. I think it’s going to be difficult for those guys. Those guys move extremely well, too.”

At the collegiate level, Steveson wrestled folkstyle, but in the Olympics, he will be in the freestyle category. Freestyle awards more points for certain takedowns, a pushout rule for stepping out of bounds without being offensive and other differences.

Fellow U.S. Olympian Kyle Dake, a freestyler in the 74-kilogram division, explained how Steveson could turn heads this week.

“Seeing his athleticism and speed, his quickness, his positioning, the way he can turn and create angles — you don’t really see that at heavyweight,” Dake said, according to the Associated Press. “Most of the time, it’s big, strong heavyweights, push, push, push and, you know, they kind of win by having the stronger defense and not making mistakes. Gable’s going out there to wrestle and wrestle a bunch of positions.”

Steveson and Dake wrestle the same day, “so we are going to get in tune,” Steveson said. “We are all there for a job and we want to come home (with) hardware.”

Steveson said given that his namesake is Dan Gable — the former Iowa State wrestler who won gold at the 1972 Games in Munich — the Olympics were always the goal.

“It was bound to happen,” Steveson said. “I didn’t think it would be this early, but I’m here now and I’m ready to shine.”

Steveson’s freshman season was off to a great start until he was derailed in the 2019 Big Tens and NCAAs by Penn State’s Anthony Cassar. Those surprising losses still sting, and Steveson would have it no other way.

Steveson has a picture of Cassar up in his locker in Dinkytown.

“It hasn’t moved in two years. … It’s just me knowing I could have done things different and he did things right that year,” Steveson said. “For me to go in there and look at it and seeing my last loss was to him, to an American person at the collegiate level. It makes me want to go hard.”

Steveson, who isn’t afraid to talk some trash or do backflips after wins, has remained cool leading up to the biggest matches of this season.

After last year’s postseason was canceled due to the coronavirus,, Eggum saw a quieter Steveson going into the Big Ten Championships in Pennsylvania this spring.

“I had never seen that before, so seeing him always so relaxed, I wondered, what does this mean? Is this good? Is this bad?” Eggum recalled. Eggum and assistant coach Trevor Brandvold asked if Steveson wanted to leave the area’s backstage area to see the lights and setup of the Bryce Jordan Center before the heavyweight final. No thanks, Steveson said.

“We can see (Michigan’s Mason) Parris (who was Steveson’s opponent) warming up and he looks ready, he’s bouncing around,” Eggum said. “His feet are moving. Man, I hope everything is good here” with Steveson.

The public-address announcer then introduced Steveson. “Gable comes running out of the tunnel and you see him, he looked so focused,” Eggum said. “This is the guy.”

It put Eggum at ease. “And he wrestled extremely good,” Eggum said. “On the other side, Parris seemed relaxed and then looked extremely nervous when the whistle blew.”

Steveson has remained on a tear since then, winning the NCAAs. Before the trials, U.S. heavyweight Nick Gwiazdowski, a two time world bronze medalist, had beaten Steveson in two matches in 2019. At the RTC Cup in December, Steveson topped the North Carolina State alum 4-1. Then at the U.S. trials in April, Steveson beat him 10-0 and 12-4.

“I know he was expecting the same thing from me; I gave him a variety, and he couldn’t take it,” Steveson said. “After the first match, he kind of crumbled after that. Just seeing his demeanor and his eyes. Going into that second match, I knew I had it and it was a matter of how I was going to do it.”

The coolness in which Steveson operated in the “speed ball” game was a reflection of how he has prepared for these Games. Steveson doesn’t sweat a regimented workout schedule nor does he feel he can’t deviate a little from his diet. He even wanted to disrupt his workout schedule in order to hold a public practice before leaving for Japan. (It didn’t work out.)

“For some guys who are very OCD, you can see it really overwhelm them,” Eggum said. Steveson’s demeanor affects his coach, who will be coaching in his corner at the Olympics.

“He is very relaxed,” Eggum said. “Even when I ask him questions about things, I realize he isn’t stressed, so I don’t want to add to that. … He competes fearless.”

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

Sign up for Newsletters and Alerts