Katie Downing has been poised for international success for several years, but a win last weekend may give the female wrestler her best shot yet.<\/p>\n
Downing, a graduate of Pendleton Heights High School, beat nemesis Kristie Marano to win the 67-kilogram (147.5-pound) weight class in the U.S. World Team Trials at Ames, Iowa.<\/p>\n
That earned Downing a spot in the 2005 World Championships that will be staged Sept. 26-Oct. 2 at Budapest, Hungary.<\/p>\n
“For the last three to four years, I had to wrestle (Marano) at some point, “Downing said in a statement released through USA Wrestling after she won a best-of-three series with a pin and a decision.<\/p>\n
“I knew it would be here that I’d have to beat her to accomplish my goal of wrestling at worlds.”<\/p>\n
The key, Downing said, was a pin that came with 30 seconds left in the first match.<\/p>\n
“It broke the seal I’ve been trying to break for a couple of years, “said Downing, who had lost to Marano in each of the past four years with a major international tournament berth on the line.<\/p>\n
The most disappointing of those came last year when Downing lost to Marano 5-1 in the U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis. Downing reflected on that match following her victory.<\/p>\n
“It felt so good to come home and see friendly faces in the crowd, so it made it all the more disappointing when I didn’t make the team, “she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Katie Downing has been poised for international success for several years, but a win last weekend may give the female wrestler her best shot yet. Downing, a graduate of Pendleton Heights High School, beat nemesis Kristie Marano to win the 67-kilogram (147.5-pound) weight class in the U.S. World Team Trials at Ames, Iowa. That earned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-lx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}