Olympic Wrestler Jeff Blatnick Grapples with Adversity and Wins

On his way to winning the first American Olympic goal medal in Greco-Roman wrestling in 1984, Blatnick persevered through the U.S.’s boycott of the Moscow Games and his own battle with Hodgkin’s disease. His determination and positive outlook on life have made him both an Olympic champion and an inspiring motivational speaker.

On his way to winning the first American Olympic goal medal in Greco-Roman wrestling in 1984, Blatnick persevered through the U.S.’s boycott of the Moscow Games and his own battle with Hodgkin’s disease. His determination and positive outlook on life have made him both an Olympic champion and an inspiring motivational speaker.

Jeff Blatnick’s story begins in Schenectady New York, where he attended Niskayuna High School. After Blatnick’s disappointing year of last-place finishes on the cross-country team, his brother convinced him to try out for wrestling. His performance that first year was less than stellar, but he took to the sport rapidly: “The one thing I always had on my side was what cross-country gave me, and that was conditioning. No one ever outlasted me. That would remain with me my whole career. I wasn’t even that strong but my technique was extremely sound. It was always a big kick for me that I could take my gargantuan opponents and tie them in knots.” His senior year, Blatnick went undefeated as he captured the New York State championship at heavyweight.

To Blatnick’s surprise, he was not recruited out of high school. He chose to attend Springfield College in Massachusetts for two reasons: “They had a great wrestling program for a Division II school, plus the team was loaded with seniors, so I knew we’d have a great first year. I wanted to be able to learn from the experienced wrestlers. That was one thing I was always good for. If there was a better wrestler around, I’d pick his brain for ways to improve my skills.”

ON SACRIFICE…

“I also looked forward to competing at the college level. Although the physical work was more intense, I never looked upon it as work. To me it was fun. There were times when I wasn’t that comfortable going through it, but no one ever had to call twice to get me out there. I would show up because I looked forward to the point when I would get the chance to compete. If I had to endure this to compete, I did it gladly.” Blatnick learned early that sacrifices in the present produce concrete results in the future.

ON GOAL-SETTING…

Blatnick also learned the importance of setting goals. His freshman year goal at Springfield was simple enough: to be an All-American. That honor went to the top six Division II wrestlers in each weight class. “Every year I set goals for where I wanted to go and why I thought I should be there,” he says. “You always dream about winning it all, but I concentrated more on the reality of what I needed to do on a daily basis; not so much on the outcome.”

ON THE LESSONS OF LOSING…

By a one-point loss Blatnick failed to achieve All-American his freshman year. He did not view it as a failure: “Losing is an essential aspect of achievement. Champions are always asked about winning. I think the most important thing about winning is how you lose. If you can turn a loss into a learning experience, you’re not a loser. The only time you’re a loser is when you give up with a loss. Even when I ran cross-country and finished dead last every time, if I ran a personal best I knew I was improving and the loss didn’t bother me.” Blatnick constantly reassesses his goals. After he missed All-American in his freshman year, he came back and took second place nationally in his sophomore year. That gave him the opportunity to wrestle in the Division I tournament with the country’s best. He lost after winning his first few matches, but was not disappointed because he was wrestling at a higher lever of competition and he relished the opportunity to learn.

ON CHALLENGING YOURSELF…

“I was never satisfied – I was always eyeing the next level,” Blatnick recalls. “If you don’t push yourself up to the next step, you will never realize your potential. You have to understand that creating challenge is what success is all about. If you don’t challenge yourself, how will you ever know if you could have achieved more?”

For the ambitious Blatnick, in 1979 that next level meant the upcoming Moscow Olympics. He befriended Brad Reingetz, the premier American heavy-weight Greco-Roman wrestler, and convinced himself he could earn a spot on the Olympic squad if he switched form free style to Greco-Roman. To concentrate solely on wrestling, Blatnick moved with Reingetz to Fargo, North Dakota. After the 1980 Olympic boycott, Reingetz retired while Blatnick stayed in North Dakota, establishing himself as the new number one Greco-Roman heavyweight. He next set his sights on achieving the quadrennium by remaining the best in his field four years in a row.

ON ADVERSITY…

That goal, too, would prove unattainable, for in 1982 Blatnick’s doctors informed him that he had contracted Hodgkin’s disease, a serious form of cancer that attacks and spleen and lymph nodes. During our interview, he mentioned this event almost in passing, and mainly as an explanation for his absence from the sport for six months, during which time he had his spleen removed and underwent radiation treatments. Blatnick’s attitude toward this potentially life-threatening disease – as an obstacle to pass and then surpass – reveals the character of a true champion: “I saw the sickness really as an inconvenience. I don’t let doubt sit and fester. Like everyone else, I suffer from doubt, and there are probably some situations where it gets the better of me. I am not a unique phenomenon. But when it came to my wrestling ability, I wasn’t going to take myself out of the game. Wrestling may have had to go on the back burner for a while, but there wasn’t a day when I didn’t look forward to getting back on the mat. At the time my body might not have been able to keep up, but my mind kept flying.”

Blatnick recovered swiftly. He did whatever possible to speed along the recovery process. “I was out of the hospital five days after I had my spleen removed,” he said. I couldn’t just sit there incapacitated, I needed to move. Self-doubt is the only thing that will slow you down, and a hospital bed is the perfect place for self-doubt to germinate. For me, the key is always to put it out of my mind and concentrate on the positive. On the fifth day I grabbed the doctor’s arm, twisted it, and said ‘I feel pretty good.’ He readily agreed and we let each other go.”

After six months the cancer was in remission and Blatnick resumed wrestling. The comeback was not easy. ‘I was brought back to a high school conditioning level. I had to find myself again and deal with losing again, even to people I had beaten before. I knew to look beyond the winning and losing to concentrate on improving day by day, week by week and month by month. I worked feverishly on my skills and conditioning until I achieved a higher level than before the sickness. In April, 1984 the hard work paid off when I won the Olympic trials.”

ON MANAGEMENT…

“Wrestling may be the most solitary team sport there is. While team scores are kept, once you’re out on the mat, you have no one else to turn to. In training, on the other hand, the opposite is true. A good coach is almost essential.” The best wrestling coaches almost always take a hands-on approach to the job. Some, like University of Iowa and 1984 Olympic coach Dan Gable, get personally involved with their wrestlers rigorous training.

Blatnick finds this approach extremely effective: “That’s one thing I always respected about Dan Gable. He used to make us run in the sand with a guy on our backs…repeatedly. Or swim in a lake fed by melting snow after we had run to the top of the mountain. And as much as you want to rebel, he’s right there doing it with you, so how can you rebel? You can’t. You’ve got to look at him and say, ‘If this is what it takes to win, and he can’t even win because he’s coaching, then I’d better do it or I’m not living up to what I can do.’ That pushes you beyond where you thought you had a threshold.”

To Blatnick the actual Olympic competition still seems more like a dream than reality: “My toughest match may have been in the first round against the defending world champion from Yugoslavia. Seeing him smoke a cigarette in the parking lot the day before the match gave me some incentive about conditioning. In the gold medal match I beat Thomas Johansen, a big strong Swede. Me, the weakling of the heavyweights. When Coach Gable told me later the Johansen had tested positive for steroids, all I could do was laugh and flex my little biceps. I kept thinking about my old motivation, taking those muscle-bound weightlifters and tying them in knots with my skinny little arms.”

ON MOVING ON…

“When I finished my chemo, walking for 15 minutes would exhaust me. From that point I had built myself back to where I could competitively go a full match with anybody. At that time I also was realizing that there was more to life than wrestling, and I wanted to settle down and have a family. Wrestling doesn’t pay a lot of bills, and I was ready to move on, so I retired to concentrate on other things. These are the reasons I felt comfortable retiring, and I have been satisfied with the decision ever since.

“I try to motivate through my story. I want to let people know that if you have a passion for what you do, nothing can deter you. Anything can bring you down, whether it’s cancer, and injury, or a lost account, it doesn’t matter.

“I think people should approach their difficulties in life with a proper perspective on their dreams. If they then consider how they can overcome these difficulties, before too long they may find those dreams coming true. I know I did.”

One of his trademark examples involves a new twist on the old half-full/half-empty glass of water. In speeches he asks the audience, “Is this glass half-full or half-empty?” “They always say, ‘Half-full,'” Blatnick explains, “because it’s a motivation seminar and they’re trying to think positively. I say that it depends, and I fill the glass with water. I tell them, ‘That’s certainly the positive approach to the glass if you’re trying to fill it, but what if you’re trying to empty it?’ Then I proceed to drink the contents of the glass.”

“My point is that your approach to a problem needs to be dictated by ;your goals. Automatically calling the glass half-full is too easy. You must look at a problem with your goals in focus before you can make decisions to bring you closer to those goals. In the business environment, you might have to fire someone you like for the good of the company. In the hospital I met some cancer patients who ran from the very treatments that could have cured them because they were afraid of the pain involved and sought comfort at the expense of what they were trying to accomplish. I learned a long time ago that you have to give to get, to endure temporary discomfort to gain the goal you want to reach.”