FILA Legends: 2012 Olympian Jake Varner

Jake Varner
Country: United States
Place of Birth: Bakersfield, CA.
Date of Birth: 24-3-1986
Height: 185 cm
Weight Class: 96kg

From Sanderson to Varner, A Gift of Olympic Gold

Jake Varner had just beat Ukraine's Valeri Andriitsev to win Olympic gold and to celebrate he did like most champions and jumped into the arms of his waiting coach.

For Varner that coach wasn’t just a national team coach, it was Cael Sanderson, an Olympic gold medalist himself and the man who’d coached Varner since he entered college in 2005.

When Sanderson lifted Varner in his arms after his Olympic finals match, elation filled Sanderson's typically stoic face.

“I just look at it as four matches ago he was an Olympian, and four matches later he's an Olympic gold medalist,” an excited Sanderson said after the celebration. “I'm just really happy for him.”

  [jake_img2] Varner understood and appreciated the value of sharing in the knowledge with a teacher who knew how to reach the sport's highest peaks.

 “Still not sure I’m in his league, but it’s awesome to be coached by a guy like that,” Varner said when asked about the significance of learning under such a decorated competitor as Sanderson. “I owe him a lot. It means a lot to have him with me.”

Varner shares a great deal in common with Sanderson. Both grew up as the sons of prominent wrestling coaches. Varner's father Steve coached him into his teen years, and played a big part in molding him into one of the United State's most accomplished youth wrestlers. Both Varner and Sanderson went on to dominant careers wrestling for Iowa State University's storied wrestling team. Both of them would come painfully close to winning world championships, Sanderson with a senior-level silver at the 2003 World Championships, and Varner with a bronze in 2011. The two of them had to defeat a past world champion in the penultimate matches of their Olympics, Varner’s semifinal foe came in the form of Georgian two-time Olympic medalist Georgi Gogshelidze. Finally, both now hold the title of Olympic champions.

[jake_img3] Since they first met, Varner felt such a powerful connection to Sanderson that twice he traveled across the United States to learn from him. First in 2005, the 19-year-old Varner moved 1,700 miles from Bakersfield, California to Ames, Iowa, after he accepted Sanderson's invitation to come and wrestle for him at Iowa State University where Sanderson was then a coach. In 2010, when Sanderson left Iowa State, Varner followed him.

Both headed to State College Pennsylvania where Sanderson would head the top ranked wrestling program at Pennsylvania State University and oversee the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club (NLWC), an Olympic wrestling training center home to many of the best wrestlers in North America, including Varner. Under Sanderson’s tutelage at the NLWC, Varner flourished, and his confidence in his ability to become the world’s best grew.

“He was going to get me to my ultimate goal, which was to win a gold medal at the Olympics — and that’s what he did,” Varner said about Sanderson’s influence leading up to the London Games.

As Varner developed as a wrestler, he cultivated his own unique style while incorporating influences of his champion mentor. Utilizing his incredible natural strength, Varner held opponents at bay with absolute command of tie-ups, unfailingly perfect positioning, and raw power. Sanderson helped Varner add to his technical repertoire the ability to score with finesse. In his Olympic gold medal final, Varner scored the match’s only takedown cleanly and effortlessly with a variation of Sanderson’s signature move, the ankle pick.

Now, after all the years they spent together, everything they have been through, all the opponents they have overcome, Varner and Sanderson see each other less as the student and mentor, but more as equals.

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“Jake watched Cael win a gold medal as a kid. Came to Iowa State because he had that same goal. When they were there, Cael mentored him, coached him and became his friend," Zeke Jones, head of the USA’s freestyle wrestling program, remarked.

Varner’s wrestling future remains uncertain -- he has not competed since injuring himself in a tournament early in 2013. However, whether or not he decides to try his hand at winning another gold medal in the 2016 Olympic, he and Sanderson will maintain their winning partnership inside and outside the wrestling room -- catching fish in the waters around State College.

The pair will almost certainly continue to share wrestling lessons with the young grapplers that pass through the Penn State and the NLWC programs. They’ll also share the greatest gift a coach can share with his athlete, the gift of gold.