Those desiring a deep dive into the history of the Minnesota Storm now have for themselves an audio guide that will indeed help with the journey.
2008 Olympian Jake Deitchler’s podcast Thrive Without Limits, which launched last year, has begun to incorporate what is called the Storm Series. Appropriately, the first guest on the Storm Series is none other than three-time Olympian and longtime head coach of the Storm, Dan Chandler.
In an episode that lasts just over an hour, Chandler easily and naturally opens up about his competitive beginnings, the dawn of the famed Minnesota Wrestling Club, remarkable athletes he has coached through the years, and how Greco-Roman has changed from era to era.
Athletes participating in both Olympic wrestling disciplines used to be common, if not expected. That is not the case anymore, certainly not on the Senior level. Chandler opines that one reason why has to due with par terre. Using baseball as a comparison (the coach is a big fan of America’s greatest game), he explains, “They say that the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a pitch, a good pitch. I challenge any of those people to try to pick somebody up off the floor — while they’re wiggling, and kicking, and crawling, and trying not to get thrown — and throw them. What can be harder than that?”
Another interesting and entertaining highlight occurs when Chandler speaks to coaching Garrett Lowney at the ’00 Sydney Olympics. Lowney had made the bronze medal match against five-time World champ Gogi Kouguashvili of Russia. Lowney, the obvious underdog, would overcome adversity late in the bout by suplexing Kouguashvili in dramatic fashion for five points. The sequence remains one of the most-watched clips in American Greco-Roman history.
“Well, they put Lowney down towards the end of the match, which cost him a point,” begins Chandler. “The guy, Gogi, couldn’t turn him. Lowney’s defense was perfect, and the referee called a leg foul on Lowney to tie the match. My head just about exploded. I was so mad, I was so upset, so pissed off, because this guy had just blatantly screwed Lowney. I remember, I was yelling at him from the corner, ‘I’m going to kill you!’
“So they go into sudden death. The guy (Kouguashvili) is a five-time World Champion. Lowney gets one of the most beautiful waist tackles, comes right up into a back suples with no hesitation and plants him right on the nape of his neck. It was the most beautiful (throw), and this was against one of the best wrestlers on the Russian team.”
The above is just a mere sampling of what Chandler brings to Storm Series Episode 1. Listen to the entire engrossing episode right here.
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