It's taken a while, but Guelph wrestler Korey Jarvis has reached one of his goals.
"This has been the long-term goal," Jarvis said Tuesday night during a training session with the Guelph Wrestling Club at the University of Guelph.
"I didn't even dream about this when I was a young kid in high school. I wouldn't even have thought of that. I enjoyed the sport and I was happy to win provincials back then. Then as I came along, I thought maybe I had a real chance at this."
The 29-year-old Elliot Lake native clinched a spot in this year's Olympics by finishing as the silver medalist in the men's 125-kilogram freestyle class at the Pan American Olympic qualifying tournament last weekend at Frisco, Tex. Top two in each weight class gained berths in this year's Olympics at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August.
"I was really, really nervous," Jarvis said. "There was some tough competition, it wasn't like I was going down there and I'm the No. 1 guy. There was the American, the Cuban and Venezuela's getting a very good team. It's not easy".
Jarvis, a welder at Guelph's Royal Stainless Steel, has represented Canada in international wrestling since 2007, but this is the first time he's qualified for the Olympics.
He got a good draw at the qualifying tournament as he received a bye in the first round and that meant he had to win a single match, a semifinal tilt, to qualify for the Olympics.
"I knew that the night before, but I didn't know who I was going to wrestle," he said. "The way the draw worked out, I was either going to wrestle the Cuban or the Venezuelan and the Venezuelan had a really close match with the Cuban."
In the first round, Luis Felipe Vivenes Urbaneja of Venezuela slipped by Yudenny Alpajon Estevez of Cuba and then Jarvis pinned the Venezuelan to score a 5-0 win in their semifinal.
"That's the one I had to win," Jarvis said of the semifinal. "I was ready to put everything on the line there. I went out hard and I was controlling the whole match from the beginning and I controlled it until the end. I was happy with my performance and that's what I knew I had to do".
The gold-medal match was won 10-0 by Tervel Ivaylov Dlagnev of the U.S. That was Dlagnev's first match of the competition as his opponents in his previous two matches had both forfeited.
"I was focused for the final," Jarvis said. "It was a tough opponent, but I knew it wasn't a do-or-die situation. It was still a good match".
A gold medalist at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and silver medalist at last year's Pan-Am Games, Jarvis will spend most of his gym time prior to the Olympics fine-tuning his technique and attack.
"The good thing is we'll know exactly who is going to be there," Jarvis said. "We'll hopefully go through some video and see some weaknesses that are in their game and work that into my offensive game."
Of course all his potential opponents will be doing the same thing.
"Everyone that qualifies for the Olympics is going to be preparing just like I am and everyone's going to be prepared," he said. "We'll go out there and hopefully get a good draw and hope everything works out. I know I'll be 100 per cent prepared for it".
