Diana’s Olympic trials and tribulations
Brock Wrestling Club member Diana Weicker confers with national team coach Tonya Verbeek at a recent event. WRESTLING CANADA PHOTO.
Brock Wrestling Club member Diana Weicker heads into this weekend’s Olympic wrestling trials in Niagara Falls in a confident frame of mind.
“It has been a long few years and process and I’m excited, confident in my abilities and training, and confident that I will bring my best, no matter what,” said the 30-year-old native of Kentville, N.S. “I think if I put all of that together, then everything will turn out the way I want it to.”
The 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medalist admits there is a lot of pressure on her and every wrestler competing at the trials.
“I’ve been trying to simplify it a lot in my brain lately, but it’s hard not to feel the pressure when you realize this is literally everything I have been training for.”
The former three-time Canadian university champion is trying to focus on the process.
“When you break it down, it’s just another day and I have wrestled the same girls at nationals for the past couple of years, won and won well,” she said. “If I just carry that forward, I am going to get the results. If I focus too much on what this is, it is going to be hard to get a result.”
Weicker had a major international breakthrough in 2018 when she won a bronze medal in the 53-kilogram division at the world wrestling championships in Budapest, Hungary. This year at the worlds, she lost her first match and was eliminated.
“It was a very close match and one I don’t feel that I should have lost,” she said. “It was devastating because she went on to qualify for the Olympics because of that.
“It was very disheartening but at the same time I had a different year.”
Her 2019 included injuries that forced her to pull out of a couple of tournaments, including the Pan Am Games.
“All in all, I think it was the best thing that could have happened because I got to come away from the worlds and just focus in on myself again and do what I needed to do.”
That was important because the Olympic trials and not the world championships is her goal for 2019.
“My goal wasn’t to have another world medal and be done wrestling,” said the part-time registered nurse in paediatrics at the St. Catharines hospital. “I want to go the Olympics and I want to win the Olympics so I had to make sure I was doing everything I needed to do to be healthy for next week and next year moving forward.”
Losing in her first match at the worlds turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
“I came home and I trained the last two or three months solid with no travelling or anything and just focusing on myself.”
The Olympic trials are the first step to qualifying for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. If she wins, the Olympic trials, she will still have to qualify internationally for the Games. Canada has yet to qualify any spots, male or female.
“The funny thing is I haven’t looked past next week and I have no sweet clue what is next,” Weicker said. “My goal is to win this event.”
The first chance to qualify will be the 2020 Pan-American Olympic Qualification Tournament March 13-15 In Ottawa. The top two wrestlers at that event qualify for the Olympics.
The freestyle portion of the Canadian Olympic trials starts Friday at the Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls and wrestlers will compete all the way through the semifinals. The best-of-three format finals will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday. Weicker is in a pool of eight wrestlers and they will compete in a single-elimination format: Win you move on, lose and you’re out.
Again, it’s nothing Weicker hasn’t done before.
“The only difference is we have to weigh in on Saturday as well so some people may have to go back and cut weight that night to make weight in the morning but there shouldn’t be any difference,” she said. “Maybe because I am 30 and my body needs to hold up, I might be sore the next day, but that’s OK.”
Having most of Saturday to recuperate is a boon to all the wrestlers.
“I am going to go home and go to bed and just relax and not think too much about what is happening,” she said. “I will build up for the finals by doing a bit of strategic planning.”
Of course she doesn’t mean going home to her Thorold home where her two young sons, Aiden and Oliver, reside along with husband Ryan Weicker.
“I’m actually going to take advantage of being in a hotel,” she said, with a laugh. “I rented myself a hotel room so I could have some peace and quiet.”
She will be delighted to have her husband, children and all her friends and family in the crowd at the Scotiabank Convention Centre.
“Everyone I want to be there is going to be there.”
