THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 4 : TWIN TROUBLE : Koslowski Brothers Are Best Bets for a U.S. Medal in Greco-Roman Wrestling

Duane Koslowski, a hulk of a man who built his bulk through a boyhood of hard work on a Midwest dairy farm, recalls a moment at his first Greco-Roman wrestling world championships. He was wrestling an East German, and his coach, a recent emigrant from the Soviet Union, tried to inspire him by hissing, “You must hate this man! He is a Communist!”

Koslowski tells the story, shaking his head and giving his audience a look that says, “Can you believe that?”

His coach, Pavel Katsen, squirms and looks a little sheepish at having such stories told on him. Koslowski shares a quick look with his twin brother, Dennis, and they burst out laughing.

Katsen tries to explain that back then he still was learning his way as a coach of American athletes. It took him awhile to learn that different things motivate different athletes.

There’s little Mark Fuller, 27, from Pleasant Hill, Calif., who is an Olympian for the third time. He works as a student-coach at Brigham Young University but looks more the part of a visiting professor. He weighs a little more than 100 pounds.

There’s David Butler at 163 pounds. He’s from Muncie, Ind., and is in the Navy, but he plans a career in business law.

There’s Michial Foy from Chicago. He’s 6 foot 4 inches, 198 pounds and looks as if he could be a member of just about any of the Olympic teams, from basketball to weightlifting.

Actually, he did qualify for two teams, making the U.S. teams in both Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling. Even after the success he’s had as a freestyle wrestler, as an All-American at the University of Minnesota, he chose the lesser-known Greco-Roman as his Olympic sport.

And then there are the Koslowskis, identical twins who are difficult to tell apart despite the fact that Duane has added an extra 25 pounds or so to move out of his brother’s weight class and into the heavyweight ranks.

The Koslowskis are close. Their mother died of a brain tumor when they were 2, and when their father could not manage taking care of 5 children himself, they were split up among different relatives. The twins went to live with an aunt and uncle.

But they’ve always had one another. They wrestled together as high school students in South Dakota and they wrestled together when they were Division III champions for the University of Minnesota Morris.

Dennis was the first to become interested in Greco-Roman wrestling, and Duane signed on to help him, to serve as a sparring partner. But the sparring sessions sometimes became so intense that punches were thrown.

What motivates the Koslowskis and the rest of the team?

“Americans are idealistic,” Foy said. “The idea of being No. 1 in the world intrigues me. It doesn’t really matter what sport it is and it doesn’t matter to me that it’s not a sport that will bring me any money in the future.”

Adds Dennis Koslowski: “I love the sport. I love the art form. I think it’s a thrill to wrestle the best in the world.”

And from Duane Koslowski: “Life is actually much tougher than sport. I like the satisfaction of immediate results in sport. In life, it’s all long-term. Are you a good employee? Are you a good father? That’s going to be proven somewhere down the pipe. In sports, you win the match, you win.”

Katsen listens carefully to each of these Americans, men who have chosen to work at a sport that is taking them away from their jobs and their families, who have chosen to dedicate themselves to a sport that most of their own country is going to ignore, who are trusting him to show them how to make U.S. Greco-Roman wrestlers competitive with the Europeans who have long dominated the sport.

He concentrates on every word.

“When you work with American athletes, you learn the importance of individuality,” he says. “They all have different, personal motivations. But the one thing that all Americans have in common is their competitive nature. They all perform better than they train.

“Americans love competition, and that comes from themselves. An American kid is his own person with his own motivation. American kids grow up as free spirits. In the Soviet Union, a kid does what he is made to do. In the Soviet Union, athletes perform at their top level in training and in competition. If you push them beyond that level, they stop. Americans keep competing.

“It is different to be born free. They are both tigers, but the tiger that is born free is different from the tiger born behind bars.”

The wrestlers listen carefully to that analysis. There is no scoffing at that.

The coach and the athletes are still learning from each other. Katsen came to the United States in 1979 and became a U.S. citizen in time to serve as an assistant coach for the 1984 Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling team. He helped coach the country’s first Olympic champions in Greco-Roman wrestling, Steve Fraser and Jeff Blatnick.

But in the 1984 Games, the Eastern Bloc countries were not competing. And they have long been dominant in the sport.

This U.S. team, though, is conceding nothing. The Koslowskis are the best bets for medals, though their hopes suffered a setback Tuesday. Dennis was decisioned by Couram Guedekhouri of the Soviet Union, 5-4, his first loss in four matches in Seoul.

Dennis is still in contention for a medal, however.

Several U.S. wrestlers have come on fast, the way Dennis Koslowski has over the last few years.

Dennis won the silver medal at the World Greco-Roman Championships in 1987 at 100 kilograms--about 220 pounds--losing to Guedekhouri in overtime in the championship match. His coach had told he could compete for a world title. But when he did it, Katsen said, “I can’t believe it! I thought you were 2 years away.”

That’s another thing Katsen likes about U.S. athletes. There is so much talent to choose from.

Duane credits Katsen with a lot of the team’s recent success. “We trained in Russia this summer, and I came away with maybe one more variation on a move I already had,” he said.

“If we had gone there 5 years ago, we would have learned a lot. He’s taught us so much, there wasn’t much left. . . . But I think his strength is his vision. You have to be able to see where you’re going before you can get there. He knows where he’s taking us.”

Duane’s passions are closer to home. His brother is very important to him, and his family is important to him. Duane has two children, Jason and Christina.

“Every time one of my kids has a birthday, I think of where I was at that point in my life,” Duane says. “So many people don’t appreciate what it means to have loving, caring parents. They just take it for granted.

“I want to spend as much time with my kids as I can, whether it’s changing diapers or reading bedtime stories. I know what it was to not have that.

“There are days when the most important thing I can do is give my kid a good hug.”

Katsen is still taking it all in.