The Transformation of Daniel Igali
To become world champion, he’d have to start believing in himself

BY LYNNE SCHUYLER

Sweat trickled down Daniel Igali’s face as he gasped for breath. One minute, he was leading the wrestling match 7-4. The next, Pan-American champion Terry Steiner had taken him down, tying the match to force an overtime bout.

A wave of humiliation swept over the 22-year-old student as he lay sprawled on his back, spent. His lungs ached and pain racked his five-foot-six-inch frame.

“Get up!” coach Dave McKay bellowed at his side. “You have to push through this!”

McKay had wanted to see how Daniel would handle the pressure of a Simon Fraser University tournament that drew North America’s top wrestlers. Now, defeat lined Daniel’s face, and McKay knew the wrestler was finished. Steiner quickly got the extra point in overtime for the win.

Afterwards McKay, who had wrestled in two Olympics himself, looked hard at Daniel. “You have the ability to be world champion,” he said slowly. “But you don’t believe in yourself.”

In the showers, Daniel sagged with fatigue. As he drove to his Surrey, B.C., home later that November 1996 evening, he tried to figure out what had gone wrong. A knee injury had kept him from training harder, but there was more to it than that. He’d been in awe of Steiner, an elite wrestler, and had gone into the tournament scared, full of self-doubt. Underestimating his own abilities, Daniel had actually believed that Steiner was going easy on him when he first pulled into the lead.

That night Daniel lay staring into the dark for hours. A burning desire to better himself had brought him from a dusty African village to this country that offered so much. Dave is right, he finally realized. I have to believe in myself more. He quietly made a vow: Next time he’d be ready.

Baraladei Daniel Igali was a toddler when his mother, Grace, and father, Leimokumo, left Nigeria for England to study on scholarships. Daniel’s grandmother raised him and two sisters in a mud hut in the equatorial village of Eniwari. When his parents returned six years later, in 1981, the family barely scraped by in the poor, corrupt country. Nobody in the village of 4,000 had electricity or running water.

Leimokumo, a stern disciplinarian, had other wives and children, so Daniel grew closest to his mother. A sensitive woman who adored her only son, she’d earned her master’s degree in education. She taught school for six hours each morning and spent afternoons searching farms for vegetables, or fishing the river to help feed the family. Daniel honed his survival skills early, jostling for his share of rice among a dozen children who crowded in for meals.

Headstrong and mischievous, Daniel loved wrestling, a sport deeply rooted in Ijaw tribal culture. He begged for permission to attend local tournaments. “You’re too young,” his father told him. Daniel would sneak off anyway.

One wilting day Daniel, ten, raced barefoot through Eniwari’s dirt streets. Appah Macauley, one of Nigeria’s Olympic wrestlers, was to visit. Children massed together to stare, awestruck, at the six-foot wrestler.

“I’m going to the Olympics, too,” Daniel boasted, jabbing a friend. Grinning, he tumbled to the grass and thrashed about with the other boy. His torn clothes would mean a caning, but he didn’t care; a dream had taken hold.

At 16, Daniel’s wrestling prowess in village matches earned him enough money to proudly pay his and his elder sister’s school fees. Lithe and fast, Daniel went on to win bigger tournaments and, in 1990, a national championship.

Despite his parents’ insistence that he attend university, Daniel balked; he had no money. He took a job with a wrestling team in a northern city, ultimately winning gold medals in the ’93 and ’94 African Championships.

On a sun-streaked day in August 1994, Daniel’s heart soared as the Nigerian team plane touched down in Victoria, B.C. Now 20 and captain of the Nigerian team, he expected to do well at that year’s Commonwealth Games. But his performance was dismal, and worse, after winning one match, he was forced to withdraw from the competition with a serious back injury.

Afterwards, volunteer Tom Murphy drove Daniel to the hospital almost every day. “What’s it like here?” Daniel asked, surveying the clean city and its leafy boulevards. As they drove, Murphy told Daniel about life in Canada. Sometimes the affable businessman talked so fast Daniel could barely understand. But he liked Murphy, and days before he was due to fly home, Daniel confided to him that he was thinking of staying in Canada.

Murphy had warmed to the bright, personable athlete. “If you do, call me,” he said.

Back in his dorm, Daniel agonized. Life was precarious in military-ruled Nigeria; many lived in fear. If Canada rejected him, he faced possible arrest back home. But he decided that making a better life was worth the risk. Two days before the team was to leave, he made up his mind and called Murphy.

The Murphys welcomed him into their home and helped him apply to stay in Canada. But everything was difficult and strange. Daniel often questioned his decision and cried himself to sleep at night, yearning for his family. As he had at home, he knelt to pray every morning, seeking comfort.

One day he sat down to write to his mother. How could he find the right words to ease her heartbreak, her sense that he’d betrayed her? He could become a better athlete and get a good education in Canada, he wrote. “Eventually you will understand….” But three months would pass before she wrote back.

That fall Daniel started practising with the Burnaby Mountain Wrestling Club. The intense workouts left him reeling. Coach Dave McKay observed his new protégé. Though lightning fast and powerful, he sorely lacked training. Time would tell if he’d fulfill his potential.

Meanwhile, Daniel struggled to build a new life. After leaving the Murphys, he shared an apartment with several athletes, but unaccustomed to their partying lifestyle, he then moved into a room next to the office space of an acquaintance. Working some nights as a security guard, he’d grab a few hours sleep on his cot before heading to practice.

In March 1995 Daniel was introduced to Surrey businessman Satnam Johal, an avid wrestling fan who frequently offered room and board to athletes so they could devote themselves to training. Daniel gratefully moved into a spartan extension at Johal’s house.

There were other bright spots. He met Nigerian basketball player Idris Orughu, who attended Douglas College in Vancouver, and they became instant friends. One Sunday, Idris invited Daniel for dinner at the home of his girlfriend’s parents, Maureen and Matt Methany.

Maureen’s radiant smile overwhelmed Daniel from the moment he entered her Richmond home, and his homesickness eased. A school principal, Maureen embraced life. Daniel found her vibrancy infectious and looked forward to his and Idris’s visits.

Normally private with his thoughts, he was soon telling her about his mother, Nigeria, even his long-held dreams.

Maureen watched over the people in her life. She never missed any of her children’s soccer games and swim meets, she went to all of Idris’s games, and she helped Idris and his friends with schoolwork. When she heard that Daniel couldn’t use a computer, she helped him, too.

“Come over if you’re hungry,” she told Daniel one night while packaging up some leftovers for him. “If you need anything, just ask.”

That fall Daniel entered Douglas College. Wrestlers had to train four hours a day six days a week, but exhausted from night shifts as a security guard or too broke for bus fare, Daniel often missed practice. Disheartened, he decided to train alone.

McKay had yet to see consistency from Daniel. He lacked the stamina for a six-minute match. Typically, his fatigued expressions told opponents he was beaten. Until he mastered his emotions and his game, McKay feared he’d never progress. He called the young Nigerian into his office one day. “You have all the talent in the world, but you’ll have to fully commit to our program to make the jump.”

Daniel groped for a response. In Nigeria, athletes never questioned a coach. “It’s easier for me to train at home,” he stammered, scared.

Feeling inadequate, resenting his coaches, Daniel carried on, seeing himself as an outsider at the gym. He’d won competitions and felt certain that he had proved his worth. It wasn’t until the Steiner match that his thinking changed.

Deeply embarrassed by that November 1996 performance, he told Johal, “I ran out of gas, but it will never happen again.” He finally understood that he was in the same league as athletes he’d long admired.

Daniel now regularly attended practices, working harder and staying later. He saved for a video camera and then studied his bouts until he could close his eyes and match each opponent move for move. Over two years, he lifted weights and ran until his muscles burned. Some days he’d lie on the mat, utterly depleted. “Now the practice really starts,” said McKay, who, along with Simon Fraser coach Mike Jones, always pushed Daniel one step further.

As Daniel’s confidence grew, there was a new determination in his eyes, and he began seeing his coaches as allies. With the help of school grants, he transferred to Simon Fraser University, where he could compete among the best. Daniel felt his hardships slipping behind him.

As his life came together, Daniel was filled with gratitude towards those who had helped him. Maureen had shown him that life was fun, and the Methanys now occupied a special place in his heart. Daniel was winning every tournament, and Maureen and Matt were his biggest fans. Sometimes Maureen drove him to school or practice, and they’d talk at length.

“There’s never a problem you can’t straighten out,” she’d remind him with the warmth of his own mother.

Education was Maureen’s passion, and she urged him to get his degree. “What if you break a leg wrestling?” she’d gently admonish.

One clear summer evening in 1998, Maureen invited Daniel over. The catch in her voice worried him, and when he walked into the room full of family and friends, he learned the dreadful news: Two years earlier, Maureen had had surgery to remove a tumour and had thought she was cancer-free. Now the leiomyosar-coma, a rare cancer, was back. It was spreading aggressively.

She hugged Daniel tightly. “Oh, yeah, we’re going to beat it,” she reassured him through tears.

Daniel was shattered, but in the subsequent days and weeks, his admiration for her only strengthened. Still undergoing chemotherapy, she accompanied Daniel to his citizenship ceremony that July and threw him a party a few days later.

Daniel’s fourth-place finish at the World Freestyle Wrestling Championships in Tehran, Iran, in September 1998 was a validation of the changes he’d made, and of his hard work and discipline. The following spring the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Association selected Daniel as Wrestler of the Year. By now, he was 119-0 in college competition and had more than 20 gold medals.

He dedicated his award to his Canadian “mom.”

Still, Daniel was engulfed in sadness over Maureen.

Two days before leaving for the 1999 World Championships in Turkey, where he hoped to qualify for the Olympics, he visited her in hospital. They shared a long hug.

“There’s no point not facing this,” she told Daniel as tears spilled down his cheeks. “Promise me you won’t cry at my funeral, because I’ve lived a very good life.”

He nodded in mute sorrow.

Daniel went to Turkey thinking about this woman who had so often set an example for others, facing cancer with courage. This is for you, he thought. Focused, disciplined, he became the first Canadian male ever to win a gold in the Worlds.

As soon as he arrived home, he rushed to the hospital. “Daniel’s here,” Matt whispered to his wife. Maureen, surrounded by loved ones, opened her eyes. Her face lit up.

“Give me that medal,” she whispered. Daniel laid it on her chest. “Are you going to be an Olympian? Are you going to win?” she asked. Choking back sobs, he nodded.

“I’m so proud of you,” she told him, and pressed the medal to her lips.

Several days later she died.

In september 2000 in Sydney, Australia, Daniel Igali jogged in place at the edge of the mat before a cheering crowd, mouthing a prayer. He’d come to these Olympics as the defending world champion, and deep down, he believed he would win the gold.

Hours earlier, he’d awoken from a dream so vivid it felt real. Maureen had been sitting across from him, telling him how proud she was.

He felt certain that she was watching over him now. Pumped with conviction, he burst into the match with moves, power and grace that left spectators cheering.

A whistle blew and he heard: “Daniel Igali, Canada. Gold!”

Overjoyed, coach Dave McKay swooped Daniel up in a mighty bear hug. He gave the dazed athlete the Canadian flag, and in a stirring moment, Daniel placed it on the mat, then jogged around it before kneeling to kiss it.

As soon as the medal was placed around his neck, he heaved with sobs. He hadn’t reached the podium alone. He thought about his mother and Maureen and everyone who had helped him along the way. He had changed in ways he never dreamed possible.

And now, his transformation was complete.

In December 2000, Daniel Igali returned to Nigeria to celebrate his victory with his family. Last spring he was selected as Canada’s outstanding male amateur athlete at the Canadian Sports Awards. And this past fall, Daniel graduated from Simon Fraser University with a degree in criminology, fulfilling another long-cherished goal.

PHOTOS: (top,middle) © ALEX WATERHOUSE-HAYWARD; (bottom) © RYAN REMIORZ/CP