For the first time since making his Olympic debut in 2012, Jordan Burroughs will not be representing the United States at the Summer Games. The 32-year-old, who won the gold in London at 74 kilograms by defeating Iran’s Sadegh Goudarzi, fell to Kyle Dake at the 2021 U.S. Olympic Wrestling Trials, ending his hopes of redemption after an early exit at the Rio Games in 2016.
Just under three weeks after his loss to Dake, Burroughs sat down with USA Wrestling and opened up about the aftermath of the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Trials and how he’s been handling the defeat to Dake.
You can watch the full interview here, courtesy of USA Wrestling.
“I just took some time off,” said Burroughs. “I think that after every competition you want to take some time to reflect, but particularly after one of that magnitude. So just took some time off, spent some time with my family, just kind of got away from it all.
“I think a lot of times our failures are so public. We live under a microscope, so it’s hard to escape because everyone you see has seen you. For the next week-and-a-half, two weeks, everyone I saw, ‘Hey, I watched you wrestle.’ ‘Hey, I watched the trials.’ ‘Hey, I’m so sorry.’ ‘Man, that stinks.’ And so it was like this really weird space that you’re in where I kind of want to get past that to the point where I can just have normal conversations again about the future and not necessarily about that performance.”
