Brandon Slay: Greater Than Gold
When I was 6 years old, my dad encouraged me to try wrestling. I remember losing my first match so badly that I ran and hid in the bathroom crying. But only 19 matches later I had a victory, and I was hooked. Of course, my dream was to wrestle for my country at the Olympics, but I had no idea how rocky the road there was going to be.
After a successful college wrestling career, I earned a spot on the 2000 Olympic team. About two weeks before I left to go to Sydney, Australia, to compete I woke up in pain in the middle of the night and discovered that my right forearm was so swollen it looked like a football.
When my coaches rushed me to the hospital, we learned that I had a dangerous bacterial infection that had to be aggressively treated with intravenous antibiotics. I was in the hospital for six days—six days I should have been training hard for the biggest wrestling match of my career. After some much-needed rest, I left that hospital room stronger than ever.
 My Olympic experience wasn’t at all what I’d expected. My first victory in Sydney was against the wrestler from Bulgaria. Then I faced the defending Olympic champion, a Russian who hadn’t lost a match in six years. There I was, an unknown guy from Amarillo, Texas, pitted against the best wrestler in the world. Somehow I pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Olympic wrestling history by beating him. I then went on to defeat the guys from Kazakhstan and Turkey and made it to the gold medal match against the German powerhouse, Alexander Leipold.
The gold medal match was a disaster. First the referees hit me with a caution because they said I wouldn’t let the German “lock” around me, and they gave him two points. I’d been wrestling for 18 years and I’d never been called for that. Then the officials hit me with another caution, this time saying I was squeezing his hand incorrectly, which again was something I had never been penalized for. It was the most awkward, unfair match I’d ever wrestled in my life . . . and the biggest one.
Down three points with only a minute left, I frantically tried to make something happen. I took a horrible shot and ended up losing another point to Leipold—the only clean point he scored the entire match. I ended up losing 4-0. So much for my Olympic dream. My coach was nearly speechless.
Stunned, I remember standing on the medal podium with a sort of “deer in the headlights” look on my face. My disappointment only worsened when the German reached down, patted me on the head, and said “It’s OK; you can win the gold next time.” Don’t get me wrong, winning a silver medal in the Olympics is a really big accomplishment, but I didn’t want to lose the gold that way.
Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. About three weeks after I got home from Australia I received a call from the Olympic committee. They informed me that Alexander Leipold had tested positive for steroids—performance-enhancing drugs that are banned in competition. He didn’t just have a trace of them in his system; he was something like 10 times over the limit! As a result, Leipold was stripped of his medal, bringing me from silver to gold just like that.
I was awarded the gold medal in a special ceremony held on NBC’s Today Show—the first ceremony ever to be held outside of the Olympics. It was an amazing feeling standing on the platform waiting for my medal. An official walked up to me, put the gold medal around my neck, and said, “You’ll forever be an Olympic champion.”
One of the biggest lessons I learned from this experience is that cheaters never really win. King Solomon, one of the wisest men in history, said that ill-gotten treasure is of no value. Whether it’s an Olympic gold medal or cheating to make an A on a test, when you cheat to achieve something it brings short-term happiness but no
long-term significance.
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