Giancola brings home gold from Games

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This article was published 24/08/2022 (1476 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ELMWOOD

Owen Salvatore Giancola was in his element, and his element is aggression. The 18-year-old wrestler from Elmwood flung opponents to the mat one after the other to win gold in individual wrestling for the 98 kilogram weight class at the 2022 Canada Games.

“It felt great. No one knew me going into that tournament. No one thought that I was going to win because I haven’t been on the radar for wrestling for a couple of years,” he said.

Giancola also plays football and is a linebacker, a position often focused on knocking people to the ground. It seems to be a trend for Giancola, whose third sport besides wrestling and football is rugby.

Another quality in Giancola’s corner, at least in athletics, is his confidence.

“I felt 100 per cent throughout the tournament. I felt like I was doing good. I was winning my matches pretty decisively. I definitely made a lot of mistakes, but in the gold medal match I feel like I showed that no one was really on my level,” he said.

Giancola said that confidence doesn’t mean he wasn’t nervous before each bout. He felt the nerves, but managed to harness them when his feet hit the mat.

Team Manitoba wrestling coach Kris Stasiak said Giancola’s ability to get into gear comes from grit and practice.

“From the day that he made the team, he was the hardest working athlete at the practices. He really put in time and effort to make good on the goal he set for himself, which was to win the games — the gold medal,” Stasiak said.

Stasiak said he believes that drive was the biggest reason for Giancola’s success.

“Talent can only take you so far, but hard work and dedication and perseverance, all those things make you successful,” he said.

Giancola wanted to win, and he wanted it badly, Stasiak said.

“He had the desire. From the moment he stepped on the mat, you could see the fire in his eyes that he wants to be the number one,” he said.

Of course, those intangibles need to be backed by something physical, as well.

Both Stasiak and Giancola said brute strength and athleticism helped Giancola power through the competition.

“I’m not the most technical wrestler, but I have a lot of speed and strength that I use to my advantage, to really get the upper hand against my opponents,” Giancola said.

Despite his success at the games, Giancola isn’t sure he’ll continue wrestling at the university level.

That may hinge on whether he ends up on the roster of the Bisons football team at the University of Manitoba, where he hopes to study at the Asper School of Business. But with the medal came interest from universities across the country to bring him in on a wrestling scholarship, which Giancola must now consider.

So, Giancola will either don his Canada Games gold or a black-and-gold jersey on his way to post-secondary. Either way, he’ll be revving up to knock opponents to the ground.