Wrestlers strike gold in South Africa

By John Austen

Summer time, and the living is easy — unless you are Coach Victor Zilberman and his Canadian team of wrestlers.

Concordia’s renowned wrestling guru proved that hard work pays off when his charges brought home six medals from the Commonwealth Wrestling Championships, held June 30 to July 2 in Cape Town, South Africa.

Gold medals went to Jonathan Rioux (84 kg Greco-Roman) and Martine Dugrenier (67 kg Greco-Roman). Silvers went to Tyler Marghetis (74 kg freestyle), David Zilberman (96 kg freestyle) and Rioux (84 kg freestyle).

Tim Wadsworth won a bronze (66 kg freestyle), while Toni Ronci was fifth (74 kg freestyle).

The event brought together top wrestlers from Australia, Cameroon, England, India, Kenya, Namibia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa and Canada.

Canada third

India won both overall titles in freestyle and Greco-Roman. Canada finished third in the Greco competition.

In the preliminary Greco-Roman rounds, India, South Africa and Canada dominated the matches and Australia with three entries fought hard to get one of their wrestlers in the final.

The lone Canadian entry in Greco-Roman was Rioux at 84 kg. He had a number of tough matches in preliminaries and then he had to beat Kuldip Sing of India in semi-final in order to reach the finals.

Rioux’s toughest match was against Pieter Gouws of South Africa in the finals, he lost the first round 5-4 and then had to win the next two rounds in order to secure the gold medal.

Coach Zilberman was happy that one of his male wrestlers won a gold medal at these championships as none of his other wrestlers were able to win it in freestyle. Martine Dugrenier, however, took a gold medal in Greco-Roman.

Every two years

The Commonwealth Wrestling Championships are held every two years. They were last held in London, Ont., in 2003.

This year’s event consisted of two round-robin pools with a crossover of the top three from each pool making the finals. Most of the competition was held at the University of Stellenbosch, 32 miles outside of Cape Town.

For more than 20 years, Victor Zilberman has kept Concordia University on the leading edge of interuniversity wrestling. Since he became the head coach of the Concordia program in 1977, he has won six national championships and has been named CIAU Coach of the Year twice, in 1984 and ‘86.

Concordia wrestlers have won more than 30 gold medals at the CIAU national championships and on five occasions Concordia athletes have been named the outstanding wrestler at the nationals.

Zilberman has been a member of the Canadian coaching staff at four Olympic Games, has coached Canadian athletes at world championships as well as at the national and provincial levels.