Bound for Beijing

In his third match and second overtime of the day at the Olympic judo trials in Las Vegas, Adler Volmar, a trainer at the 24 Hour Fitness in Coral Springs, Florida, found himself center stage in a deciding sudden death. The next score would earn a trip to Beijing, leaving the loser empty handed.

Although Volmar had competed in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta representing his native country of Haiti, this would be the first time competing for the United States.

With his stomach doing summersaults before his first match, Volmar couldn’t keep any food down. Now with his third match dragging on, he was fighting on fumes. But he struck first. His opponent, Brian Picklo, countered him, starting to pull Volmar into the air. The crowd noise became deafening, but Volmar only heard the thump of his heartbeat. “I thought, this is the moment,” he says. Volmar then stretched his body and countered the counter, turning Picklo for the win in the 100 kg weight class.

When Volmar walked off the mat, news media wanted to interview him. But he couldn’t speak. Every time he tried, he kept choking up. “Everything was going through me all at once,” he says. He thought of all those days spent practicing his signature uchi mata or osoto gari throw moves in the pool. He remembered all the support he received from his wife and kids, coaches, therapists, and 24 Hour Fitness clients and staff. But mostly there was memory of his mother, who passed away 2 years ago and was the one who signed him up for Judo at age 13. 

It was all too much.

As Volmar soaked in his win, two other 24 Hour Fitness employees were enjoying their own Olympic moments. Brian Olson, fitness manager at the Fort Collins Sport club in Colorado, took first place for judo in the 90 kg weight class and Adam Wheeler, trainer at 24 Hour Fitness Sport in Colorado Springs, upset the No. 1 ranked competitor in a best of three finals round for the 96 kg weight class of Greco-Roman wrestling.

Like Volmar, Olson was plagued with injury leading up to the trials. After falling short in three Olympics—Atlanta, Sydney, and Athens—the four-time national champion had retired from judo, a sport he began competing in when was 6. But after 3 years in retirement, last June he decided to train for Beijing. Already on a tight schedule, an opponent fell on his ankle and broke it a month into his training. With his summer training delayed, his competitive return was at the U.S. Open last October, and although Olson felt rusty, he won the tournament.

But Olson still didn’t compete in enough events to earn a top ranking leading into the trials, which meant he’d have to win five matches to punch his ticket to Beijing.

Despite having to work his way through a checklist of opponents at the trials, he felt strong that day. “My judo was completely crisp, clean, and point accurate,” he says, especially when it came to his signature foot sweep, which he used to throw his opponent for the final win.
And that win will buy him one more shot at the Olympic gold medal he’s tried to win for more than 22 years.

Before Wheeler’s final match, he looked out at the crowd and realized it could be his last match ever. His mind wandered to all the big tournaments in his wrestling career when he came in second, including three silver medals in the Armed Forces Championships while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. But not today. Today he would finish first. “Ten seconds before I walked out the last time, my former college coach came down from the stands and screamed ‘this is your turn,” Wheeler says. “Him yelling at me like that kicked things up a notch in my head.”

In the finals he faced off against Justin Ruiz, a five-time national champion. Wheeler won the first match. Ruiz the second. It all came down to the last 30 seconds of the third period of the third match, which was Wheeler’s sixth match of the day. In the defensive position with Ruiz’s arms pulling him in a gut wrench, Wheeler held off Ruiz for the win. After raising his arms in celebration and running up in the stands to hug and kiss his wife, one of Wheeler’s first phone calls was to his old high school coach and mentor. “We talked about how my freshman year I was a chubby little kid who finished the season 1 and 15.”

While Volmar and Olson both already know the adrenaline-charged thrills of the Olympics neither has had the honor of donning a medal. Olson’s come painstakingly close: The podium has even snaked him one heart-wrenching second. “There is only one reason I’m out of retirement, spending time away from my wife and asking others at my gym to pick up the slack while I’m gone,” he says. “A medal.”

Volmar has his sights set not only on a medal, but the one most coveted. “No one from the U.S. had ever brought home a gold medal in Judo,” he says. “I visualize making it all the way through.”

Visit you24.24hourfitness.com to follow their experiences in Beijing.