April 10, 2000
April 10 2000

We picked up our training tempo in practice last week. We're now doing the bulk of our wrestling on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays and relaxing a bit more on the remaining days. I found myself really tired after three days of wrestling and was looking forward to a good massage on Thursday. But unfortunately, my masseur had to cancel. Although, he gave me a great one hour message on Saturday to make up for the missed day.

Wednesday was one of most intense days yet. We were put in groups of threes and had 18 minutes of wrestling in total. My goal was not to give up any points, and if I did, to fight it to the end. Thankfully, I lived up to my expectations. I had a bit of a bloodbath with Justin Abdou. Justin is one of the guys in the room that makes me work for every point, minute and second I wrestle with him. He is one of the people I attribute my success to.

Something interesting happened during our scrimmage session as well. While I was grabbing some water, I began to yearn for the drums. I wanted to hear the same beat I heard as a kid wrestling in Nigeria. I wanted the talking drums to talk to me. If you're a little confused or think I was just delirious after three hard days on the mat, that's okay. The drums I'm referring to are the ones that would play when I wrestled in Nigeria as a youngster. The talking drums would tell me to "guard my legs" or to "take advantage of an opening." But since moving to Canada I rarely ever hear the drums. My two biggest shocks when I started wrestling freestyle in 1990, were wearing wrestling shoes and wrestling without the beat of drums.

With the Olympic less than six months away, I wonder how many times I will yearn and thirst for the beat of the drums. I wonder if there will be traditional wrestling songs humming in the background while I take it to my opponents in Sydney. One thing is for sure though. With or without the drums, there will be a welcoming voice in my corner. It will be the voice of my coach, Dave Mckay.

Keep sweating!

Daniel (Dynamite) Igali



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CTV.ca News Staff

Olympic gold medal winner Daniel Igali has entered the political arena. The former wrestler will run for the Liberals in the spring provincial election.