Christine Nordhagen
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Christine Nordhagen (born June 26, 1971 in Grande Prairie, Alberta) is a Canadian wrestler. She began wrestling at age 20, and is a graduate of the University of Alberta. She has won six world championship gold medals: 1994, 1996, 2000 and 2001 in Sofia, Bulgaria (70 kg freestyle for '94 and '96, 75 kg for 2000 and 68 kg for 2001), 1997 in Clermont-Ferrand, France and 1998 in Poznań, Poland (both 68 kg). She won a silver medal in 1993 in Stavern, Norway and a bronze medal in 1999 in Boden, Sweden (both 70 kg). At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens she placed 5th in the 72kg women's freestyle. She retired from competition a year after after the Athens Games. On June 26, 2006, Nordhagen's husband and longtime coach, Leigh Vierling, received a phone call to inform Christine that she had been voted into the class of 2006 inductees to the international wrestling hall of fame. She became the first Canadian and first woman to be named to the hall by the Federation Internationale de Luttes Associees (FILA), wrestling's international and Olympic governing body. The ceremony was scheduled to take place during the world wrestling championships Sept. 23 to Oct. 2 at Guangzhou, China. The permanent display of honorees is housed at the Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in Stillwater, Okla.
"In my career, I had a really good win streak and lot of that has to do with my husband, Leigh, who's been a phenomenal coach in getting me ready for all those championships -- and, sure, a little luck was involved," Nordhagen-Vierling said.
"For Chris, it's an acknowledgment of her career as legitimate, respected around the world," Leigh Vierling said.
Nordhagen-Vierling was not a wrestler who went to the mat with a mean streak and a scowl. She says she never ran well using hate as emotional fuel, as some athletes do. Her modus operandi involved a smile of confidence and the work ethic of a girl raised on a farm where the labours didn't have genders.
"For me, it was all about opportunity," said Nordhagen-Vierling, who started winning titles at Canada's first national championship in 1992.
When she began competing at world championships in 1993, there were fewer than 150 Canadian women registered in wrestling. By the time she retired, there were more than 4,000, not counting non-registered girls at the high-school level, says Greg Mathieu, executive director of the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Association.
"Winning was about keeping perspective, that it's an opportunity to succeed," Nordhagen-Vierling said. "I'd have fun and feel lucky to be there. Leigh had me thinking of the training sessions as putting money in the bank, and tournaments were the chance to spend it all, put it all out there on the line and not worry about losing. It took pressure off the final result."
Being the first woman in the hall of fame breaks a barrier, but citified gender hurdles weren't something that Nordhagen-Vierling had to deal with as she grew up.
"In a farm family, there's a different perspective," she said. "I had a mother who did everything my father did, because on a grain and cattle farm, things have to get done. . . . There were some gender stereotypes -- she cooked more than my father did -- but she also fixed machines, carried loads. It wasn't an option for me to say I can't do things because I'm female."
Nordhagen-Vierling helped get the women's side of the sport into the Olympics for the first time at Athens in 2004, where she finished fifth. She'd beaten most of the women in the field, but in the last days of her career, though Nordhagen-Vierling still maintained the reflexes of a cat, she'd acquired the battle-scarred knees of a Bobby Orr and didn't make the final four for a medal shot.
Nordhagen-Vierling and former world champion cyclist Tanya Dubnicoff were among several retiring female athletes who were drafted into a special training program by the Coaching Association of Canada to help retain and pass on expertise to a new genereation. In 2006, besides maqintaining a busy schedule as a motivational speaker and role model for students (under the sponsorship of Alberta oil and gas companies), Nordhagen-Vierling began coaching Canadian junior women.
Nordhagen-Vierling is one of nine wrestlers inducted for 2006, a class representing 30 individual world titles and eight Olympic gold medals.
Joining Nordhagen-Vierling in the freestyle category: Soslan Andiev, two-time Olympic gold medalist and four-time world champion for the former Soviet Union; Leri Chabelov of Russia, a 1992 Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion; Il Kim of North Korea, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and world champion; and Shozo Sasahara of Japan, a 1956 Olympic gold medalist and 1954 world champion.
