Brown: Loss Doesn't Define Spencer Lee

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Tom Brands was among the Iowa coaches in attendance at an I-Club event in my home town of Fort Dodge. The year escapes me.

When Brands got up to speak, he fired a zinger at this native son, telling the gathering that I didn’t know “doo-doo” about wrestling.

Afterwords, he said he hoped he hadn’t offended me. I laughed, because he was right. Basketball, not wrestling, has always been my No. 1 winter sport. But I do follow wrestling, and I have a great appreciation for the athletes who take the mat. No one setting a screen to get you open. No one to rebound your miss. Just you and the competitor across from you. It takes a lot of sacrifice to be successful.

It doesn’t take a wrestling expert to realize the greatness of Spencer Lee. Of all the athletes I’ve seen compete at the University of Iowa, he lives on the front page. Fierce, fluid, fast, and very demanding of himself. He won one of his three national titles missing the ACL in both his knees.

As he headed into the NCAA Championships in Tulsa, Okla., last week, Lee said he hadn’t reached the one and only goal he’d made for himself. That was to become the fifth four-time national champion in the history of the sport.

I had no doubt he'd achieve that goal. A man with single-minded purpose is a hard man to beat.

And then the unbelievable happened. He got pinned in the final second of his semifinal match against Matt Ramos of Purdue, a rival Lee had pinned in the second period of a January dual.

Lee’s winning streak had ended at 58 matches. His lofty goal went with it.

When Brands met with the media after Lee’s defeat, it was obvious the loss weighed heavily on him as well. I’ve watched this video several times, and I’m struck by the emotion Brands carried with him as he answered questions.

Remember, this is a guy who won three national championships at Iowa himself, and was an Olympic gold medalist in 1996.

“The easy thing to say is he’s got to move on,” Brands said of Lee. “And it’s hard. It’s really hard But you’ve still got to move on. As easy as that is to say, that’s really the next step in all of this. And that sounds cruel to say because of the magnitude of it…”

Brands nods his head, and continues.

“The magnitude is … high.”

Asked to analyze the Lee-Ramos match, Brands added, “To me, it’s tragic right now. The next step is to take the next step. The sting is always there.”

Lee doesn’t need anyone to make excuses for him, but he wasn’t in top physical condition heading into nationals. A day after his Friday loss the University of Iowa issued a release saying that “It’s been a road of recovery for Spencer Lee. He will medically forfeit out of the 2023 NCAA Wrestling Championships today in Tulsa.”

Lee’s loss was called one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport. It took me back to 1970. March 28, to be exact. That was the night the greatest upset in the history of college wrestling took place. And it created one of the worst headlines in Des Moines Register history. That headline read:

“TITLE TO CYCLONES–GABLE FAILS!”

Iowa State legend and future Iowa coach Dan Gable took a 181-0 collegiate record into the 142-pound title match against Larry Owings, a sophomore at Washington. Owings took a 8-6 lead into the final period and stunned Gable and the wrestling world, 13-9.

“Gable fails’ is a bit too strong for someone who dominated his sport, continued to do so and is now wrestling’s icon.

But it is a loss that has dogged Gable ever since. In a 2014 Sports Illustrated story written by Albert Chen, Gable said, “I know the match affected my entire life. Just sitting here, talking about it, it hurts. I’m emotional about it because there’s still a lot of meaning.”

The sting that Brands talked about, and the hurt Gable spoke of, will be part of Lee’s career story moving forward.

But one loss did not define Gable. And it will not define Lee. It there was a Mount Rushmore that symbolized the history of wrestling at Iowa, Gable and Lee would be chisled in stone. Because greatness yields to no one.