ATHENS — They stood at opposite ends of the Olympic wrestling hall. On the end with the podium, standing at attention on the top step and wearing an olive wreath as Olympic champion, was Cael Sanderson of Heber City, Utah.
On the other end, in a corner of the stands, taking pictures, waving American flags and exhaling for all they were worth, stood the rest of the family.
To get to an understanding of the phenomenon that has become Cael Sanderson — new Olympic gold medalist; "Mr. Perfect" in college when he won 159 straight matches at Iowa State; and arguably the most unassuming person ever to have his picture on a Wheaties box — you have to go through the rest of the Sandersons. His older brothers Cody and Cole. His younger brother, Cyler. His parents, Steve and Debbie. Team Sanderson.
They were there when he started and they were there, along with Cael's wife, Kelly, at Ano Loissia Olympic Hall in northwest Athens Saturday night, sitting in the fifth row, center section, and using every move of body language and verbal encouragement to help him make his way through the middleweight division (185 pounds) of the Olympic freestyle wrestling tournament.
When it was all triumphantly and thankfully over, after Cael had produced his come-from-behind 3-1 victory in the gold-medal match over Eui Jae Moon of Korea, after the cheers and the tears and the congratulations, Steve Sanderson went back in his mind about 20 years.
"You want to find an activity that will be good for your kids and keep your family together," he said, his voice cracking, "and you never think it's going to end up like this."
Some families boat, others hike, others go to museums. The Sandersons wrestle.
It just made sense. Steve was a wrestler in high school and college and made his living as a wrestling coach. Then he married Debbie and they started having boys. It was only natural for Steve to bring his work home with him. Family fights really were family fights. Last takedown wins.
"I saw them getting each other in chokeholds, and I finally decided to get in there, too," said Debbie as she, too, stood in the wrestling hall surrounded by her sons and her husband and visited the path that got them all there. "With all boys, we weren't going to any dance classes, I can tell you that."
Cody, now 28, came first, Cole almost two years later and then, a year after that, Cael, whose name for the first three years was Cale. "But when you wrote it in cursive it looked too much like Cole, so we changed the spelling around," said Debbie, who added, winking, "We just wanted to give them strange names 'cause they're strange kids." (Cyler, 17, came along eight years after Cael.)
But while his older brothers were stronger and wiser, Cael was bigger, which made for an ideal training ground. "They'd work him over and he'd let them," said Steve. "They'd go at it pretty good."
"You didn't feel bad about beating him up 'cause you're related to him," said Cole.
"That's what older brothers do," said Cody. "He just had to go out and grow a bunch, to make the job more difficult."
"All Cael wanted when he was young," said Debbie, "was to do everything his brothers did."
It wasn't all wrestling. There was a little soccer, a little baseball, Cael played high school football ("You should have seen his leg tackles," said Steve), but wrestling was the core. The family went to tournaments en masse. Somebody was always practicing, coaching, competing or, when Debbie got involved with state and national federations, administrating.
The success came in buckets. Every boy was a state champion. Wasatch High was ranked among the best wrestling schools in America. Cody, Cole and Cael all won scholarships to Iowa State (Cyler, a high school All-American and a senior at Wasatch this year, hasn't decided yet where he'll go). But the family motto never has been "we're better than anyone else" or, for that matter, "winning is everything."
"We've never stressed winning," said Steve, who is now an assistant principal at Rocky Mountain Middle School in Heber City. "The way we've always tried to look at it is losing is just a reality check about what you need to work on to get better."
It is what Cael stressed as he prepared for the two biggest matches of his life Saturday — a semifinal in the morning against Yoel Romero of Cuba, a world champion and Olympic silver medalist from the 2000 Olympics and the man who beat him last year to end the winning streak he brought out of college, and the final Saturday night against Korea's Moon, also a silver medalist in 2000 at Sydney (at 167 pounds).
"I need to keep adjusting," Cael said. "These guys are tough and they're smart. I need to learn and get better."
"Cael will be the first to tell you that winning and losing isn't what matters," said Cody as his brother was honored at the highest level of his sport. "Winning and losing are just part of growing. Everybody's going to lose. The thing is to learn from it. Focusing on winning is not the way to go. He has never done that."
Many did not think the college phenom, who graduated from Iowa State two years ago, could progress so quickly on the international level. College wrestling differs in many respects, in rules and techniques, from freestyle wrestling. "It's like learning a different stroke in swimming," said Debbie.
"It isn't easy and it takes time."
But as Cael lost — twice to Romero, then to Russia's Sazhid Sazhidov at the 2003 World Championships last year in New York, then to Lee Fullhart at the U.S. national championships earlier this year — he learned.
After defeating Fullhart just to get to Athens, he finally got the best of Romero in the semis, 3-2, and then, against Moon in the final, he defeated the man who had defeated Sazhidov in the other semifinal. He did it the hard way, coming back from a 1-0 deficit with a two-point takedown with 1:28 remaining and, finally, the one-point takedown that clinched the match with 54 seconds left.
As the crowd roared and the buzzer sounded, someone in the stands threw an American flag that landed on Cael. After looking at it for a moment, he draped it over his shoulders and self-consciously trotted from the arena.
"I didn't plan a celebration and I'm not too good with props," explained Cael as he talked to the media before going back out for the medal ceremony. "I just wanted to get out of there before I made a fool of myself."
"I had fun this week," he said, relaxing, "even when I was behind, I can honestly say I was having fun here. This was everything I hoped it would be."
He said he has made no plans for the future. "I'll just go home and spend some time with my wife and my dog and figure it out," he said.
Asked about the role his family had played in his gold medal, he said, "I couldn't have done it without them. They have always been there.
"But it wouldn't have mattered what happened tonight," he added. "I knew my family would love me no matter what." Like his mother, he ended with a joke, "I didn't have to hide a spare key outside the house so I could get in if I lost."
With that, the curtain call came — time to mount the fabled podium and have the gold medal draped around his neck.
Cael Sanderson trotted back into the arena, without the flag, climbed to the top step when he was told, and looked around. There, in the corner of the arena, he found his family, waving and shouting and taking pictures — and from both ends of the triumph, Team Sanderson enjoyed the moment.
Lee Benson is in Athens to report on the 2004 Summer Games for Deseret Morning News readers. This is his ninth assignment to cover the Olympics. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com.