RIP Jeff Blatnick
Copied and pasted from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/sports/jeff-blatnick-gold-medal-winner-in-wrestling-dies-at-55.html
Jeff Blatnick, 55, Dies; Won Olympic Gold in Wrestling
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: October 24, 2012
Jeff Blatnick, who overcame cancer to win a gold medal for the United States in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1984 Olympics, died on Wednesday in Schenectady, N.Y. He was 55.
The cause was complications of heart surgery, his wife, Lori, said.
Competing in the super heavyweight class at the Summer Games in Los
Angeles, Blatnick, 6 feet 2 inches and 248 pounds, defeated Thomas
Johansson of Sweden to take Olympic gold.
Blatnick and his teammate Steve Fraser, who competed in the 198-pound
weight class at those Games, became the first Americans to win Olympic
gold medals in Greco-Roman wrestling, which allows holds only above the
waist. Blatnick’s win came barely two years after his victory over
cancer.
After retiring from wrestling in 1988, Blatnick worked as a motivational
speaker and as a network television wrestling analyst. At his death, he
was a varsity wrestling coach at Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake High School,
north of Albany.
Jeffrey Carl Blatnick was born on July 26, 1957, in Niskayuna, N.Y.,
near Schenectady. He began wrestling in high school, becoming the state
heavyweight champion in 1975. At Springfield College in Massachusetts,
from which he earned a degree in physical education in 1979, he was a
two-time N.C.A.A. Division II national champion and a three-time
Division II all-American.
Blatnick was named to the Olympic Greco-Roman team in 1980; the United
States boycotted the Moscow Games that year to protest the Soviet
Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
In 1982 Blatnick developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that attacks the
spleen and other organs. After surgery to remove his spleen, followed
by radiation, he resumed training and made the 1984 Olympic team.
Blatnick, who lived in Ballston Lake, was inducted into the United
States Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1999. He was also a longtime
commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts promotion company.
Besides his wife, the former Lori Nowak, Blatnick is survived by his
mother, Angela; a brother, Andrew; a son, Ian; and a daughter, Niki.
Blatnick, who was chosen by his teammates to carry the American flag at
the closing ceremony of the ’84 Games, was philosophical about his
renown.
“If I didn’t have cancer, nobody would know who I was,” he told The
Lancaster New Era, a Pennsylvania newspaper, in 2007. “Not a lot of
wrestlers make the news.”
For more info:
- http://www.teamusa.org/News/2012/October/24/Jeff-Blatnick-Dies-At-The-Age-Of-55.aspx
- http://www.mmafighting.com/2012/10/27/3560844/blatnicks-funeral-and-how-the-term-mma-came-to-be
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Blatnick
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