WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS JOURNAL (Updated Sept. 24): Long journey to Worlds finally ends

In the photo: USA Wrestling's Craig Sesker (right) and Travis Shives check out the outdoor market in Baku. Photo by InterMat's Jason Bryant.

SOMEWHERE OVER EASTERN CANADA - We're 8-plus hours into a 10-plus hour flight home and it's time for my final journey entry from this trip.

The journey home on a long overseas trip often can be a marathon, but this lengthy trip is more like a triathlon as we fly through 11 time zones en route to Colorado.

USA Women's Team Leader Stan Zeamer invited me to the women's freestyle party after the tournament ended Sunday night, so I put my life in the hands of one of Baku's crazy taxi/racecar drivers and rode out to the resort where the women were staying. Their hotel was right on the Caspian Sea with a very nice beach. Their hotel was considerably nicer than ours, as we had heard from many of the girls we had talked with. The dinner was excellent and it was nice to unwind a little bit after a long seven-day tournament at the World Championships.

We almost missed our flight. We waited about 45 minutes for a cab at the resort before finally giving up and jumping in the bus with the women's team and riding with them to the airport. Their flight was a little later than ours. We cut it pretty close, probably too close. You need to be at the airport at least a couple of hours early for an international flight because of the long process of checking in, going through security, checking passports and then boarding the huge planes we travel on.

Our flight left Baku at 3:55 a.m. Monday and I was so tired I'm guessing I couldn't have been awake more than 10 minutes on the four-hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany. Part of the reason was I somehow ended up in business class. The seat reclined almost all the way back and I was able to stretch out and enjoy the comforts of sitting in that section of the plane. The seat I was in also had a lower back massage on it, and that was pretty sweet. I had that on the whole time.

Our layover in Frankfurt was seven hours, so a group of six of us decided to take a train into the city and do some sightseeing. The group included me, USA Wrestling President Jim Ravannack, USAW Executive Director Rich Bender, USAW National Events Manager Travis Shives, Kansas-USA Wrestling State Chairman Mike Juby and InterMat's Jason Bryant.

We spent about 3 hours walking around downtown Frankfurt. It was nice to be in a more modern city with new development, plenty of American franchises and it was nice to see sidewalks again after 11 days in Baku.

It was 49 degrees outside when we started walking around at about 7 a.m. in Frankfurt and it actually felt pretty good after the steamy weather in Baku. A couple of hours later, the weather was perfect. It was in the 70s with the sun shining brightly. We hit a Starbucks and grabbed some Vanilla Lattes before exploring more of the city.

Frankfurt has an impressive skyline along with its share of majestic, older buildings, including some churches. We walked in a church that had a picture of it from World War II. The entire area around the St. Bartholomew Cathedral had been decimated by the war, but the church was still standing. The structure did need some repairs after the war.

When we arrived at the church early Monday morning, a service was actually going on. We were able to poke our heads in there to see what was going on. It might be the oldest building I've ever been in.

We walked over a couple of bridges that went over the river that winds its way through downtown Frankfurt. There are bicycles everywhere. They have bike lanes running down all the sidewalks, in a designated area, just off the curb. Rich and Travis quickly stepped out of the way of an oncoming bike while checking out the city.

USAW's Dave "Doc" Bennett, who usually enjoys these little excursions into the cities we visit, elected not to go with us. He hasn't been feeling well and his allergies are acting up, but he still found a way to make us laugh. "They might have to bury me before we get home," Doc said with a smile. A lady in the airport was giving him a hard time about carrying two bags onto the flight and Rich was having some fun with Doc about it. Sometimes you have to wonder if the whole world is against Doc, or at least he thinks that way sometimes.

It was an interesting couple of days for Rich, who was able to attend the Elton John concert on Sunday night in Baku along with USAW National Teams Director Mitch Hull. Rich and Mitch sat in the fourth row in a 50,000 seat soccer stadium. They both gave the show two thumbs up.

After eating lunch at McDonald's in the airport (it actually tasted like McDonald's in the U.S.), we finally boarded our flight out of Frankfurt at 1:10 p.m. local time. No business class this time. We're sitting back in economy with minimal leg room.

I decided to watch some of the DVDs that I bought for next to nothing in Baku. They were supposed to all be in English.

After watching the final episode of Season 3 of "Grey's Anatomy," I popped in the DVD of "Bourne Ultimatum," but it only had English subtitles with voiceovers being done in Russian. Good thing I only paid about $3 for that movie. I can probably give it to one of our Russian-speaking coaches to watch.

I also bought two other movies - "Blades of Glory" and "Knocked Up" - and they are both in English. I just watched Blades of Glory again. I saw it at the theater and on my trip home from Brazil in July, but I may have laughed even harder this time. I am a huge Will Ferrell fan and he's hilarious as figure skater Chazz Michael Michaels.

The flight is about 2 hours longer returning home because we are flying into a headwind this time. Travis just told me he can't wait to get home. He is not alone.

Travis is returning home with a classic old Russian hat he bought when we went and visited this huge market in Baku on Saturday afternoon. Travis and I posed for pictures with the Russian hats before he bought one. The picture, which is posted with this story, is pretty funny. I put it up as my screensaver on Sunday.

Jason took some funny shots of our trip to the market and our trip right after that to a local pier near our hotel when we finally had some free time Saturday. I did this little dance with the Russian hat on that had all of us laughing our heads off. I was in tears I was laughing so hard.

It was a good trip. It was amazing seeing our Greco-Roman team win its first World team championship. And it was great to see women's freestyle legend Kristie Marano tie Bruce Baumgartner's record by winning her ninth career World medal. Kristie badly wanted her third World title, but she definitely made a statement for the upcoming Olympic year that she is still a force after winning a World silver medal in Baku. It also was good to see Daniel Cormier finally win a World medal in freestyle.

We should be on the ground soon in Denver before we drive back home to Colorado Springs. We should be home before 7 p.m. Monday, making for a very long day with the change in time zones. I may kiss the ground when we get to Denver. I love to travel, and it is fun having an opportunity to go on some of these trips.

But there's no place like home.

Saturday, Sept. 22

Today's Journal includes a pair of stories relayed to me by co-worker Travis Shives, who as most of you know is working this event for us for TheMat.com.

Travis, who may need back surgery when we go home from the not-so-comfortable-seats he is sitting in while typing play-by-play, wanted to make sure we gave major kudos to Mike Juby for helping us out.

While I'm down working the floor, doing interviews, and working with our athletes and coaches, Mike is filling in brackets and relaying the information to Travis. Then Travis either Instant Messages or calls the results back to Meredith Wilson, our IT/Webmaster back in Colorado. We don't have a press row, so we're sitting in the stands in Section 13-14 trying to cover the World Championships.

Mike, who is the State Chairman for USA Wrestling-Kansas, is a great guy and has pitched in to help us here as we scramble to cover the event under very trying circumstances. But Mike has been wearing the same pair of glasses for a number of years and needs to find a Lens Crafters very soon.

He's having some trouble reading the names of the countries on the scoreboard and on the back of the singlets, but it's not real hard at all for me or Travis to see them from our location.

Not having 20/20 vision, even when you are wearing your glasses, is not a good thing. Case in point came during the freestyle heavyweight bronze-medal match last night between Tommy Rowlands of the U.S. and Artur Taymazov of Uzbekistan. They call Taymazov - a past Olympic and World champion - "the Experiment" and it's easy to see why. The guy is carved out of granite and also has lost most of his hair. He looks like a bulked-up version of "Mr. Clean" from the TV commercials.

You would think it would be pretty easy to tell him apart from the younger Rowlands, who has a full head of hair and a little different body type. But not Mike.

When Taymazov scored a couple of times in the first period, Mike for some reason was clapping for the Uzbekistan wrestler. At the end of the period, Travis leaned over to Mike and said, "By the way, Rowlands is in red, not blue." Mike leaned in close, squinted and said, "Oh."

I guess we're not in Kansas anymore.

Seriously though, this has been a great experience for Mike. He had the opportunity to experience what an event like this is like. It's been great having Mike on the trip. Hopefully, when he returns to his home in Hutchinson, Kan., he will go get his eyes checked and get some new glasses.

Travis, Mike and I have made friends with this burly security man in the section of the stands we've been sitting in. We've given him a number of USA pins, and now he's our buddy and takes care of us.

We couldn't pronounce his real name since it has a couple of upside-down E's in it - as Jason Bryant of InterMat pointed out - so I nicknamed him "Norton." Not after Jackie Gleason's sidekick in "The Honeymooners," but because he bears a striking resemblance to former NFL linebacker Ken Norton Jr.

He had a hard time dealing with a few of the people who wanted to sit in his section of the stands without the proper credentials, mainly because they would keep arguing with him after they were told to leave.

But after a large group of Russian fans left after the freestyle competition, "Norton" had very few fans in his section today so he decided to chill out and take a seat near Travis and Mike. Then he asked to see our brackets during the end of Saturday's first session of the women's freestyle competition.

Shortly after Mike went to go get something to drink, a match ended and Norton noticed we weren't writing the country down on their brackets as Travis and I were talking about something. He asked Travis for our red pen and wrote down the name of the winning country for us.

Travis and Mike both posed with Norton and some of his security friends for pictures, and one of the security guys took a picture of Mike with his cell phone.

One more thing, we had a great lunch today. Travis and I were able to secure passes and that got us into the VIP area for some free grub. We had soup, a beef entrée and chocolate cake for dessert. A nice change from some of the cuisine we've had here.

Friday, Sept. 21

I'm trying to write this a little earlier today so I can try to get more than 2 or 3 hours of sleep tonight.

I'm sitting in the press center between sessions and listening to George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone" on my iPod. I can't believe how long I waited to get an iPod. Now that I finally have one, I can't get enough of it. These things are lifesavers on these long overseas journeys.

You can listen to the music on the never-ending flights or when you're working on your stories or when you're trying to drown out your roommate's snoring.

Not sure who snores the loudest here among our group from the U.S., but two of the leading candidates reportedly are me and USA Wrestling National Events Director Pete Isais. InterMat's Jason Bryant is rooming with Pete at the Hotel Absheron and he taped some of Pete's snoring and then played it for us. It wasn't hard to hear, that's for sure. Pete left this morning for home, so Jason is looking forward to a nice, quiet room.

The other great invention for overseas travel is Pepto Bismol. Bet co-worker Travis Shives wishes he had some right now. He's been a hurting unit the past 48 hours with more than a few problems with his insides. He told me he hadn't eaten anything for two days before he just had lunch here at the venue. I got sick in July on the way home from the Pan American Games in Brazil and it was not an enjoyable trip home. It's amazing, and scary, what kind of impact that new and different cuisine can have on your system.

We can't do one of these without a reference to Dave "Doc" Bennett, our developmental freestyle coach/director of broadcasting/video guru. He really did have a reason for jumping into the U.S. Greco-Roman championship photo the other night. He put together much of the video for the team's scouting purposes and put scouting video on an iPod for each of our three coaching staffs in men's and women's freestyle, and Greco-Roman.

Doc even changed his pants and shirt today. Seriously though, he's not too far from retiring and riding his Harley into the sunset. He's done a lot for this sport for a long time.

Major kudos go out to my boss, USA Wrestling Communications Director Gary Abbott, for his assistance in helping our coverage of this event. Gary normally would be here, but he covered Junior Worlds in Beijing, China, last month in the venue where the Olympics will be held. A couple of weeks later, he was in Turkey for the World Beach, Sombo and Grappling Champioinships.

He's put his passport away, for now, but he's still helping us a great deal from our USA Wrestling offices in Colorado Springs. He's helping by editing and posting stories, posting results, sending out releases and contacting news media in the U.S. about anything big that happens in Baku. That means he was a busy man the other day when the Greco-Roman squad won the World title. We have some more big stories coming up about those guys.

It's a total team effort to put together the coverage we do.

And kudos to freestyle wrestler Joe Heskett, who graciously gave me a few minutes of his time for an interview after he finished just short of winning a medal on Thursday. Joe nearly knocked off eventual champion Makhach Murtazaliev of Russia in the semifinals before falling in the bronze-medal match to place fifth.

I told Joe's inspirational story in an article I wrote for our magazine, USA Wrestler, earlier this year. Joe was raised by his grandmother, Evelyn Nye, and they are still extremely close. His grandmother is here at the tournament along with Joe's wife Tara.

Joe's a very intelligent young man who has his master's degree in educational leadership with an emphasis on athletic administration. On more than one occasion, he has used a big word that I had to Google to make sure I knew the definition of it.

Joe's spent a long time as the No. 2 or No. 3 guy at 74 kilos, and certainly has paid his dues. I would have loved to have seen him win a medal.

After the interview, Joe said something to me that puts everything in perspective: "I didn't win a gold medal here, but I have two gold medals waiting for me at home."

He was talking about his two young daughters, Olivia and Ava, who are waiting to see their dad when he returns home to Columbus, Ohio, in a couple of days.

And finally, I need to pass along kudos to Katie Downing for doing a great job on the athlete journal from the Worlds. I knew she would do a nice job, but I've had a number of good comments about the work she's done. I appreciate her taking time to do this and share her experiences while preparing for the biggest tournament of the year. The insight she's given into the life of an athlete has been very interesting, to say the least.

Also, they still haven't found Volunteer Women's Coach Kevin Black's luggage. It was lost during his trip over here. Unfortunately, lost luggage is a regular occurrence on these long trips. My bags made it here OK, but we'll see how it goes on the way home.

Thursday, Sept. 20

I'm just staring at a bunch of white space on my computer right now as I ponder my next journal topic.

It's very late again. These days are very long. We leave the hotel just after 7 a.m., the competition starts at 8 and we are at the venue until around 10 p.m. We snag a cab ride back to the hotel and then work a couple of more hours in the lobby before trying to catch a little bit of sleep.

Here are a few observations from Thursday:

The fans from Iran are the most awesome, and most energetic, wrestling fans I've ever seen. This is the first time I've seen them in person. They're up in the stands with a guy playing some sort of trumpet while their fans chant, cheer, dance and wave their flag. You have to see it to believe it. They're incredible.

And they appreciate great wrestling, as many of you already know. Wrestling is hugely popular in their country. You always know when a wrestler from Iran is competing. Their fans are loud and very supportive of their own athletes.

The Azerbaijan fans are very loud and enthusiastic as well. They brought in a set of five or six drums and started pounding away while the Iranian fans were making their own noise.

Wonder if the Japanese fans will show up with their Thunderstix like they did at last year's Worlds in China?

The U.S. didn't win a freestyle medal in the first five weight classes, but it still was in fourth place after the second of three days of competition. If the U.S. added two more fifth-place finishes Friday it would finish with 30 points, just one fewer than the American team champion in Greco-Roman. Let's hope for a couple of medals instead when Daniel Cormier and Tommy Rowlands compete.

Can't wait to see our U.S. World Team Trials in freestyle at 66 kg/145.5 lbs. next June in Las Vegas. Doug Schwab just finished fifth at the 2007 World Championships, Bill Zadick is a 2006 World champion and Chris Bono is a multiple World Team member. Plus you have contenders in Eric Larkin, Jared Frayer, Zack Esposito, Jared Lawrence, Jesse Jantzen, Cary Kolat and Brent Metcalf.

Woke up this morning to an e-mail from my boss, Gary Abbott, who informed me that the NBC Olympics site had linked to my story from our Greco-Roman team winning the World title on Wednesday. It was very cool to see that. Look for our Greco boys to be attracting plenty of attention in the news media and that's great. They deserve it.

We've had some scary cab rides in Baku this week, but the one we had tonight going back to the hotel instantly jumped to No. 1 on our list of bad cab rides.

One of the security guards from the arena walked down to the street with us just before 10 p.m. and hailed a cab for me, USA Wrestling's Travis Shives and InterMat's Jason Bryant. You should have seen this orange hunk of junk. It was some sort of station wagon that must have had about 800,000 miles on it. And it had these small little tires on them that didn't look like they were inflated. Jason and I initially wanted to get a different cab, but Travis talked us into hopping in.

The cabbie was laughing when I asked him how he could tool around in such a crappy car. He was driving along like the guy on "Revenge of the Nerds" because all the cars in Baku were flying by him. I asked him if he had the accelerator on the floor to get the taxi to top out at 40 mph. Jason was in the front seat and reached back to put on his seat belt. But he noticed there was no metal clip on the one end and the other end was connected only by a coat hanger. Jason came up with his own makeshift air bag by holding his computer bag in front of him so he wouldn't go flying through the windshield.

Breaking news from Baku: Dave "Doc" Bennett was wearing the same clothes yet again today. At least he won't have as much laundry to do as the rest of us when we get home.

Bought a Snickers and a Coca-Cola from the concession stand today, and surprisingly, it tasted like what we had at home. Can't wait to get home so I can eat some real food again.

Time to get some sleep.

Wednesday, Sept. 19

Someday when I decide to retire, I will look back at the highlights of my professional career covering thousands of sporting events.

And what happened Wednesday night definitely will rank near the top.

Seeing our Greco-Roman team make history by winning the title at the World Championships was nothing short of amazing.

It's a cliché, but it really was a total team effort. Everybody contributed, from medal winners Brad Vering, Harry Lester and Dremiel Byers to all the administrators, coaches, training partners, trainers, doctors, team leaders and anybody else who helped the U.S. team over here.

I was standing on the platform taking pictures of the team with fifth-place finisher Lindsey Durlacher's camera when the Star-Spangled Banner started playing. I had goose bumps all down both arms during an amazing moment for our guys.

Another very cool scene came when USA National Coach Steve Fraser was standing on top of the championship podium holding the gold trophy. They were having trouble getting the National Anthem to play so U.S. World Team Coach Jay Antonelli said "We'll sing it" and then Dremiel starts singing and the rest of the team joins in. And the crowd started clapping and cheering which was neat to see. Very cool. Shortly after the U.S. team started to sing, the Star-Spangled Banner came on over the loudspeaker. That was very cool as well. You wouldn't believe how sweet that song sounds when you're thousands of miles from home and halfway around the World.

To see Dremiel deliver in the clutch was impressive. There's a lot of pressure when you're the last guy wrestling and the only guy wrestling on that day after the other six guys competed the first two days. Dremiel delivered when it counted for the U.S. team. He rebounded from a tough semifinal loss to deliver a huge, huge win.

USA Wrestling's Travis Shives and I almost didn't recognize co-worker Dave "Doc" Bennett on the competition floor. He decided to change up his black-sport coat, blue-pants, lime green-shirt, ASICS-running shoes ensemble. Well, he changed his shirt anyway. He switched to a tan USA Wrestling polo shirt, but everything else stayed the same.

Speaking of Doc, it initially looked like an imposter had snuck into the back of the World Championships Greco-Roman Team photo. But it was Doc, our developmental freestyle coach. He wasn't hard to spot in his black-sport coat, blue-pants, tan-shirt, ASICS-running shoes ensemble.

Canada heavyweight Ari Taub just sat down with us. He's wearing lime-green Crocs on his feet. Those would go great with Doc's shirt. His old shirt. Seriously though, Doc has been busy working with the video here at the event and is working some marathon days like the rest of us.

Shockingly, as InterMat's Jason Bryant points out at 11:46 p.m. in the hotel lobby, the Internet in the Hotel Absheron is down again. This was the last reliable source of Internet.

Jason was added to our list of look-alikes tonight by our own Dremiel Byers. When Jason and I walked over to interview Dremiel, I asked him if he knew Jason. Dremiel said, "Yeah, I see him every night on the 'King of Queens.'" Very funny. Jason does look a little like actor Kevin James.

Three-time Olympic champion and nine-time World champion Alexander Karelin of Russia was spotted in the arena again Wednesday wearing a CCCP shirt. He still looks like a guy you wouldn't want to mess with.

Wednesday, Sept. 19

BAKU, Azerbaijan - It's very, very late and I'm very, very tired, but I promised I would write this every day so here goes.

It is 1 minute before midnight Tuesday night and USA Wrestling's Travis Shives and I have been working for more than 17 straight hours. Travis probably is about ready to kill me right now for all the hours he's already worked in this tournament while helping our communications department.

Here are just a few random thoughts from what transpired in another wild and crazy day at the 2007 World Championships:

The day started with good news - real good news. My Washington Redskins won a big road game over the Philadelphia Eagles. The Redskins are 2-0 and looking good with quarterback Jason Campbell running the offense. Maybe Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs still has the magic.

That was about the end of the good news for the day. This event continues to be a disaster. Today, all of the Internet went down in the arena, even in the press center. That is crippling when you are trying to cover an event and provide results to the people back home. We did our best, using our international cell phone to call back to Colorado Springs at $5 a minute, to keep our brackets somewhat up to date. Can't wait to see our phone bill.

Kudos to Meredith Wilson, our Webmaster/IT Director, for managing the results and brackets back in Colorado Springs. She's getting calls in the middle of the night back in Colorado as we try to cover this event.

The all-time classic of the tournament so far came after the Bulgarian wrestler won the World championship at 74 kg/163 lbs. During the medal ceremony, they played the wrong National Anthem. Not once. Not twice. Three times. Three different songs and the wrong one each time. InterMat's Jason Bryant quipped to a group of us that one of the songs may have been by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The wrestler was not happy, but they apparently did the whole ceremony again with the Bulgarian National Anthem being played at the end of the session Tuesday night.

Imagine training your whole life for a moment like this and then they can't get the anthem right. Pretty unbelievable.

Just before that, half the lights went out in the arena during the finals at 96 kg/211.5 lbs. They just kept on wrestling at 96, probably because they were afraid the other half of the lights would go out.

Remember the black-sport coat, blue-pants, lime green-shirt, ASICS-running shoes ensemble USA Wresting's Dave Bennett was wearing Monday? He was wearing it again Tuesday. I wonder if Doc just slept in his clothes. I hope he's not wearing it again Wednesday.

They did bring us food and drink in the press room, but those meatless sub-type sandwiches were not real tasty. Oh well, Jason has that visit to McDonald's to look forward to on the way home when he gets to Frankfurt, Germany.

The highlight of the day was seeing Brad Vering wrestle his butt off to win a World silver medal in Greco-Roman at 84 kg/185 lbs.

I've followed Brad his entire international career. My first year as a sportswriter at the Omaha World-Herald newspaper in 2000 was the start of Brad's senior year at the University of Nebraska. He is a total class act all the way and a great guy who has always been great to work with.

When I was in the running for the communications manager position early last year at USA Wrestling, I asked Brad if he would call USAW and serve as a reference for me. I am very grateful to him for doing that and helping me land my dream job.

Brad just turned 30 and finally won his first World medal. Nobody works harder than he does and nobody deserves this more than he does.

Don't be surprised if Brad wins the Olympic Games next year in Beijing, China.

Monday, Sept. 17

I've been to thousands of sporting events during my 19-year professional career as a journalist.

I've covered football games in the snow, cold and pouring rain. I've been pelted with hail at the state track meet. And I've sat in ice-cold press boxes covering Class A minor-league baseball games in early April.

But today's experience on Day 1 of the 2007 World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan, may rank as one of the most miserable experiences of my journalistic career.

If you want a How-Not-To-Guide on running a World Championships, all you have to do is come here.

It simply is embarrassing how bad it is here. Somebody should be ashamed of themselves for putting this tournament here.

For starters, they have no press row. None. No place for the media to sit, watch and cover the tournament at the same time. No place to plug in a computer in the venue to do our jobs. Again, it is embarrassing. Your average high school tournament is run 10 times better than this.

Even though many of us have press passes to be on the floor, the security is telling us we can't be on the floor or trying to grab us and physically move us if we're standing too close to the mat. One guy told me that my photography pass was "no good" and I had to shoot from the stands even though my pass clearly states I can be on the floor.

Larry Slater, the excellent photographer who is working for us here, also ran into problems with security not wanting to let him on the floor. It was funny that we had three people from the U.S. taking photos and we were getting grief, but the 20 or so photographers from Japan were all down on the floor.

Why issue credentials telling people where they can go and then tell them they can't go there? Pretty amazing.

USA Wrestling's Travis Shives, who is helping me with coverage of the event, had to find a seat in the stands and try typing up the play-by-play with his computer on his lap. The Wireless Internet was down for much of the day, so he ended up shuttling back and forth between the stands and the press room to post results. He did a great job with excellent description on what happened in the matches. He may need to see a chiropractor when we get home after working in the stands all day.

Making matters worse, the FILA website was down for roughly five hours today during the first day of their biggest event of the year. That made trying to follow the tournament a bit of an adventure for the people back home. We did our best with our brackets on TheMat.com to keep people up to date. The event organizers provided no printed results for us and provided nothing to drink in a sweltering press center.

I asked the press manager where press row was and he said, "I don't know." Those seemed to be the three favorite words of most people we talked to. It makes me appreciate how well our staff runs the USA Wrestling events.

Even our coaches have had some trouble where the security staff was seen trying to grab them and push them back when Harry Lester was wrestling in the semifinals. Our coaches did nothing wrong and weren't too close to the mat. Some of the grabbing and pushing the security people were doing on the floor was borderline abusive.

Steve Fraser, our National Greco-Roman coach, was trying to walk down to the end of the arena to scout a match and a security guard was trying to block his path and grab him so he couldn't walk down there. It was pretty ridiculous to say the least. He's a coach with a pass to be down on the floor. Let him do his job.

John Bardis, our Greco-Roman Team leader, ended up being kicked off the floor by security for basically doing nothing wrong. He had a pass to be down on the floor. The only people having trouble seemed to be the ones with USA on their passes. John is one of the nicest, most selfless people I know. He does a great deal for our sport and shouldn't be treated like that.

Weigh-ins started 40 minutes late Sunday and Monday's first session started about 20 minutes late. Anybody who has cut weight knows how upset some of the wrestlers must have been when the weigh-ins were delayed. There is no excuse for that happening.

One of the few positives has been the crowds. There were around 4,000 fans there for the finals to watch Farid Mansurov win a gold medal at 66 kg/145.5 lbs.

But there were way more negatives. A frustrated journalist had a good line when talking about the organizers of this event: "This organization…has no organization."

These people have no clue of how to run a wrestling tournament. Absolutely none. Can't wait to see what happens tomorrow.

On a lighter note, the fashion police would have had a heyday with USA Wrestling Director of Broadcasting Dave "Doc" Bennett. Doc's attire today won't land him on the cover of GQ anytime soon. He was wearing a black blazer, blue pants, a lime green shirt and ASICS running shoes. Luckily for us, Doc said all his video equipment seemed to be working fine and he seemed relatively stress-free for a change.

And I give major kudos to Greco-Roman wrestler Harry Lester. He basically had a match taken away from him because of poor officiating in his semifinal match against Mansurov and his hometown fans. I thought Lester had the guy pinned late in the first period. But they would never make that call with the event being held in Azerbaijan.

To Harry's credit, he came back and was dominant in his bronze-medal match. He now has two straight World bronze medals. To me, Harry was clearly the most entertaining wrestler of the first day. He is always looking to score and doesn't stand around during the first minute and wait for the coin flips. I think Harry will win a gold medal at the Olympics next year.

We've been having fun trying to come up with likenesses in Baku. One of the best ones is for Greco-Roman heavyweight Ismail Guzel of Turkey. InterMat's Jason Bryant pointed out that Guzel is a dead-ringer for four-time Division II national champion Les Sigman of Nebraska-Omaha. Sigman placed fourth at the U.S. World Team Trials this year in freestyle, so the two lookalikes may never meet on the mat. But who knows?

Sunday, Sept. 16

It was just after midnight in Baku and I couldn't fight it any longer.

My beloved Iowa Hawkeyes, favored by 17 points and off to a 2-0 start this year, were trailing 12-0 at the half against the 0-2 Iowa State Cyclones. Not sure if there are any sports bars in Baku, so I was tracking the game on my computer in the hotel lobby on ESPN Game Cast.

Ran into World silver medalist and past Hawkeye All-American Mike Zadick and he assured me the Hawks would come back. I didn't have quite as much faith as he did and I decided to go to bed. He was almost right.

When I woke up this morning, I learned that Iowa came back and took a 13-12 lead, but still ended up losing 15-13. So much for the college football season. At least they didn't lose to Appalachian State.

Not sure if it's too late to pull out of my friendly little wager with co-worker Tony Black, a past All-American for Wisconsin. I bet him lunch that Iowa would win at No. 7 Wisconsin next week. Not the smartest move I've ever made.

Hopefully, my Washington Redskins will beat the Philadelphia Eagles today.

Our first three athletes - Greco-Roman wrestlers Lindsey Durlacher, Joe Betterman and Harry Lester - are scheduled to weigh in at 3 p.m. local time today. Lindsey and Harry won World bronze medals in 2006 while Betterman will make his first World Championships appearance. Lester has looked extremely dominant this year and I picked him to win a gold medal.

The wrestling competition will kick off at 9 a.m. Monday. Three weight classes will be contested each day for seven days. Greco-Roman kicks off the competition, followed by freestyle and women's freestyle.

Trying to get our credentials here was not an easy task. When we arrived at the airport a couple of nights ago, USA Wrestling National Teams Director Mitch Hull handed me my credential. It looked fine with my photo on it and everything until I noticed it said "Guest" on there. That wasn't going to get me down on the floor and where I needed to be to cover this event.

I went by the room in the hotel where they were issuing credentials to get mine changed to a press pass and the lady there kept telling me to come back later. After a couple of days and about 10 trips over there, they finally let me in. I now have my pass to get down on the floor. It wasn't easy because the person they had me talking to spoke very little English and kept becoming frustrated when I told him I was having trouble understanding him. It turns into a game of Charades sometimes when trying to communicate because of the language barrier.

Travis Shives, USA Wrestling's National Events Manager who is helping me here, still hasn't been able to get in there to get his pass.

Journalist Bill May had me laughing this morning when he wondered where the nearest Starbucks was in Baku. We actually had a Starbucks on virtually every street corner at last year's Worlds in Guangzhou, China. And we had a Pizza Hut, KFC and McDonald's right across the street from the venue. No such luck here. The American franchises apparently haven't made their way into Baku yet.

Bill did point out that we have CNN, in English, in our hotel rooms.

I had a good breakfast this morning at the Absheron Hotel with eggs, sausage and yogurt. The price of our rooms also includes three meals a day at the hotel. The food has been pretty decent for the most part. That is always a concern when you travel overseas.

The food at the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro was really good for the most part - most notably the Brazilian steakhouses - but I did get sick while traveling home and didn't start feeling better until about a week after I got home. I do miss my little crew of press officers from Rio. Nobody can snore like Bill Kauffman of USA Volleyball and nobody has the dance moves like Cecil Bleiker of the USOC.

Just arrived at the venue and to say they are a little disorganized is a big understatement. They have a very nice media center, complete with Internet, but they have no media seating set up in the arena. After talking to a handful of people, I finally found an interpreter. A very nice young lady from Baku named Sara, who speaks excellent English, explained to me that they didn't have the media seating set up in the arena yet. Not a good sign when the tournament is scheduled to start in about 20 hours. They also don't have all the mats set up yet. They're using four mats, but only two were set up by early afternoon Sunday.

Saturday, Sept. 15

Walked into the practice facility for the World Championships on Saturday morning and one of the first people I ran into was Bill Zadick.

I rode the bus from the hotel over to the venue with some of the guys on the Greco-Roman team and arrived just as freestyle practice was ending. We slept in a little bit after a very long day of traveling.

Zadick, a 2006 World champion, was giving me a hard time for showing up as freestyle practice was concluding. Bill is an awesome guy. Seeing him win the World title and covering it last year was one of the highlights of my professional career.

Unfortuately, Bill is not back to defend his title. He's battled his share of injuries and ailments, and missed nearly the entire season. Bill wrestled in only two tournaments this season and ended up fifth at the U.S. World Team Trials.

Even though Bill is not competing, he could definitely help our freestyle medal count again this year. He is here as a training partner and is working out with his younger brother, Mike, a returning World silver medalist, and past Iowa Hawkeye NCAA champion Doug Schwab. This is Schwab's first World Championships, but it was Mike Zadick's first Worlds appearance last year and he made the finals.

Mike was very close to winning a World title last year and is eager for another shot at achieving his lifelong goal.

As we watched Greco-Roman practice, we saw Cuban World champions Mijial Lopez and Alexis Rodriguez working out together. Lopez wrestles Greco-Roman and Rodriguez freestyle. Both guys are massive and look like they could be bookend tackles in the National Football League.

Journalist Bill May, one of the most knowledgable wrestling writers in the World, has arrived in town for the event. Bill has lived in the U.S. and Japan, and is a virtual expert on women's wrestling. It's good to see him and it's good to know he's around if we have any questions about the girls from Japan. He is working with the Japan Wrestling Federation.

And InterMat's Jason Bryant made an interesting discovery. He snapped a photo of the only "No Smoking" sign in Baku. He also took a funny shot of U.S. wrestler Andy "Silent H" Hrovat, wearing a headband, in a cab on his way back to the hotel.

I had a good interview with the always-quotable Dremiel Byers this morning. Dremiel is a 2002 World champion and very determined to win a medal this year. I just posted a feature of him on our site. I also had good interviews with Greco-Roman wrestler T.C. Dantzler and Coach Steve Fraser. Our Greco guys are a veteran group and are very good with the media.

I also chatted with Momir Petkovic, one of our Greco coaches. He loves this time of year. He knows what it takes to reach the top after winning the Olympics during his career. And he's an excellent coach who has made a significant impact on a lot of our guys.

We shot some video interviews today at practice and USA Wrestling Director of Broadcasting Dave "Doc" Bennett is hoping to have them posted later today. Look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Mike Duroe, one of our freestyle coaches, called me Kent when he shook my hand this morning. But he quickly caught himself. My brother, Kent, is the more famous of the Sesker brothers. He is a top college and high school wrestling official who works a number of events involving Duroe's Cornell College team. And he recently became the marketing director at the Dan Gable Museum in Waterloo, Iowa.

Our hotel is located right on the Caspian Sea, probably less than the length of a football field away. We have an interesting view of the large city from our seventh-floor hotel room, where you can look out onto the water.

Sitting here talking to Travis Shives, our National Events manager, about our game plan for tomorrow for covering this event. Travis went for a run with his neighbor, World Team member Brad Vering, this afternoon along the area by the Caspian Sea. Momir also was along for the run. Glad to see someone is getting some exercise over here.

Vering has had a great season and I am picking him to win the World title. I really think this is his year to do it.

Friday, Sept. 14, 11:55 p.m.

Greetings from Baku.

After a long stretch of traveling, we're finally in Azerbaijan as the 2007 World Championships are just a little over 48 hours away from starting.

The trip got off to a slow start, but the two long flights - from Denver to Frankfurt, Germany, and from Frankfurt to Baku, Azerbaijan - couldn't have gone any more smoothly.

We touched down at around 9:30 p.m. Friday night and USA Wrestling National Teams Director Mitch Hull was in the airport to greet us. After a short bus ride to the hotel, USA Wrestling National Events Manager Travis Shives and I were able to check in right away. Mitch did a great job hooking us up with rooms and everything else we need on the trip.

We now have a couple of days to become acclimated and prepare for the big seven-day event.

Ran into InterMat Jack-of-All-Trades Jason Bryant in the lobby of our hotel. He arrived the day before we did. This is his first overseas trip and he's already been to one of our freestyle practices near the hotel. The Wireless Internet wasn't working in the hotel and Jason walked over to reset the Wireless Router at the front desk.

Also bumped into young Greco-Roman phenom Spenser Mango in the lobby. Mango, second at the U.S. World Team Trials, is here serving as a training partner to World Team member Joe Betterman. He is nowhere near 55 kilos right now after just finishing a BLT and a chicken basket. But he doesn't have to make weight again until Sunkist in late October.

USA Greco-Roman training partner Jake Fisher, who along with Mango trains at the U.S. Olympic Education Center, is busy in the lobby working on a test over the Internet in psychological statistics. He is majoring in sports science. Spenser isn't working on his homework however.

Betterman (60 kg/132 lbs.), Lindsey Durlacher (55 kg/121 lbs.) and Harry Lester (66 kg/145.5 lbs.) will weigh in Sunday and compete on the first day of the tournament Monday.

Durlacher and Lester both won bronze medals at the 2006 World Championships. Lester looked very good in winning the 2007 Pan American Games.

I've been up now for about 36 straight hours. Time to get some sleep.

Friday, Sept. 14, 2 p.m.

FRANKFURT, Germany - Greetings from Europe.

5,025 miles and 8 1/2 hours after leaving Denver on Lufthansa Airlines, USA Wrestling Manager of National Events Travis Shives and I have landed in Frankfurt, Germany, before we catch a connecting flight to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the 2007 World Championships.

The flight went very smoothly on the massive jet and the flight crew did a great job taking care of us.

We were a little disappointed in the movie selection on the flight. "Mr. Bean's Holiday" was shown and I gave up on it after about 20 minutes. It was one of the worst starts to a movie I have ever seen with this guy who looks like a European Pee Wee Herman trying to be funny, but failing miserably in my opinion. "Ocean's 13" was being shown on some other Lufthansa flights, but unfortunately not on ours.

Walking through the massive terminal to our gate, we saw our fair share of people who are also heading to Baku for the World Championships. We saw wrestlers from Tunisia, Bolivia, Peru, Canada and Denmark who are going to be on our flight. A number of mat officials are here, including Dave and Zach Errett, and Tom Clark from the U.S.

Mike Juby, the state chairman from Kansas, also is in our terminal. He was selected by USA Wrestling as a reward for his work and also to expose a grass-roots leader to a major international event like the World Championships.

It's 12:22 in the afternoon (4:22 a.m. in Colorado) so we are starting to hit the wall after the long flight as we operate on very minimal sleep.

Time to get on the plane to Baku.

Thursday, Sept. 13

DENVER - Anybody who knows me is fully aware I'm not one to voice my opinion or complain a whole lot. Well, that's not really true at all, but we've had an interesting start to our journey.

Travis Shives, USA Wrestling's Manager of National Events, and I called to confirm Thursday morning that we had aisle seats for our flight from Denver to Germany. But after driving up to Denver from Colorado Springs and checking in with Lufthansa Airlines, we discovered Travis had a middle seat and I didn't have a seat assigned to me yet.

Travis, who has a master's degree in speech communications, put those skills to use as he adeptly negotiated his way into an aisle seat. We're sitting here eating right now and I was just told I have a seat on the plane, but they're not sure which seat yet.

We spent about a half hour, at least, trying to check in and then stood in line for another 45 minutes before going through security. For some reason, they only had about half the lines open for security as a long line formed in the Denver airport.

We were offered 700 Euros (about $900 U.S.) apiece by the airline to give up our seats on the overbooked flight. Maybe we should have thought a little more about that.

I sure hope this is not an indication of what lies ahead, but I know we could have a lot bigger problems with this. We had a good laugh about it.

This is the third overseas trip for both me and Travis. He just traveled to Greece in June and I was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July for the Pan American Games. It feels like I just got back from there.

I have to be careful what I say about Travis because his mom just called him and said she was reading about him in this journal.

Anyway, we're finishing off a late lunch and preparing for the nine-hour flight tonight to Frankfurt, Germany. After about a three-hour layover, we'll head to Baku, Azerbaijan on about a five-hour flight.

Hopefully, it will go smoothly. And hopefully I will have a place to sit during the several-thousand-mile flight.

The wrestling starts in four days and I'm like a little kid waiting for Christmas. The excitement continues to build the closer we get to the competition.

Wednesday, Sept. 12

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Everyone was in full scramble mode at USA Wrestling World Headquarters on Wednesday morning.

All 21 of our U.S. World Team members in men's and women's freestyle, and Greco-Roman wrestling have already departed for the 2007 World Championships, set for Sept. 17-23 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The Greco boys left six days ago, the freestyle team left Sunday and the women took off Monday.

The freestyle and Greco teams, along with their training partners, coaches and trainers, are already in Baku training and going through final preparations for the event. The women are in Austria taking part in an acclimation camp before heading to Azerbaijan.

Even though the teams are already gone, the World Team warm-ups didn't arrive in Colorado Springs until Tuesday. That added to the last-minute push to make sure everything was packed and ready to go. Hopefully, nobody forgets anything.

In addition to everything else we are taking to Baku - clothes, computers, media guides, notebooks, passports, cameras, video equipment, etc. - a final group of five of us will each take a huge bag with the Team USA warm-ups in them. Hopefully, the airline will get them to Baku.

USA Wrestling Director of Broadcasting Dave "Doc" Bennett, Director of National Teams Mitch Hull and Director of National Events Pete Isais are scheduled to fly out of Denver this afternoon en route to Baku. It's funny seeing Doc scramble around, all out of breath, trying to make sure he doesn't forget anything. He's been on more of these trips than any of us, by a large number, but you would never know it when you see him frantically trying to get ready.

As I found out at last year's Worlds in China, there is never a dull moment when you travel with Doc. He's also our Freestyle Developmental Coach and he is kind of our Jack-of-All-Trades here in the Springs. Even though he is in his mid-60s, he rode his Harley-Davidson motorcycle from here to Las Vegas and back this year for the World Team Trials. He's a guy with a million stories. And he's the guy who always seems to find the best buys when shopping on these overseas trips.

I am scheduled to catch a flight out of Denver tomorrow afternoon with Travis Shives, USA Wrestling's Manager of National Events. We are scheduled to fly about nine hours to Frankfurt, Germany, and then take around a five-hour flight to Azerbaijan. Two planes doesn't sound too bad to me after it took us four planes to get from the Springs to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July for the Pan American Games.

Travis will be assisting me in our coverage of the event on TheMat.com. He has a strong communications background. He worked in public relations for the Minnesota Vikings and he helped cover the 2005 Worlds in Budapest, Hungary, for USA Wrestling and TheMat.com, so I'm looking forward to working with Travis in Baku.

Travis is a great guy who is one of the bright young people in our organization. He is very passionate about wrestling and very knowledgeable. Even though he wrestled for Minnesota State-Mankato, where he was an All-American, he still turned out pretty well. (I covered Nebraska-Omaha wrestling, one of Mankato's rivals, from 2000-06.) All kidding aside, it will be fun to have him along on this trip. I'm putting him in charge of making sure we don't get into any trouble over there.

Putting together a trip like this with a large travel party is a major undertaking as Mitch and USA Wrestling National Teams Manager Jaimie McNab can attest. Among their many roles are trying to line up flights, hotels and ground transportation for everyone in the travel party, obtain Visas so everybody can gain entry into Azerbaijan, line up workout facilities for the teams, and transport everything to a country that is 11 time zones ahead of us here in Colorado.

As you can tell, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work and preparation that goes into making a trip like this possible.

I can't wait to get over there and see the competition. Last year was my first World Championships and I never want to miss another one. The competition was awesome, plus the opportunity to visit another country and see how another culture lives is always intriguing.

Seeing Joe Warren and Bill Zadick win World titles last year in Guangzhou, China, was something I will never forget. Anyone who has wrestled at any level has some appreciation for what those guys did. There is no sport more grueling or demanding, both mentally and physically, and to reach the pinnacle is an incredible accomplishment.

I'm guessing the crowds will be very good in Baku. Wrestling is very big over there and with wrestling-mad Iran bordering Azerbaijan to the south I imagine there will be a lot of fans watching the action. Azerbaijan has some very good wrestlers - several of whom have a shot at winning gold medals. Seeing some fans would be a big improvement over China, where the crowds were very sparse.

I think our teams are ready for a strong performance. We have veteran Greco-Roman and women's teams, plus we have some newcomers to the World stage in freestyle who have been working their whole life for this opportunity.

This is a huge tournament, with it being a qualifier for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. The top eight finishers in each weight class qualify their countries for the Olympics, so that makes the stakes even higher than usual for a World event.

Who is going to be this year's Bill Zadick or Joe Warren for Team USA? Can't wait to see how it turns out.