What Wrestling Taught an Olympic Gold Medalist About God
As he prepares for the Paris Olympics, wrestler Kyle Snyder talks about how faith helped him loosen up and love his teammates.
Kyle Snyder, the youngest US wrestler to ever win Olympic gold in 2016, is competing in the Olympics again this year with Team USA, now as a more veteran member of the team.
He has many other accolades, including three NCAA championships, two world championships, and a silver medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The top wrestling competitors are the US, Russia, and Iran, which adds geopolitical zest to the bouts, Snyder noted.
Snyder and I met in Philadelphia—he lives and trains in State College, Pennsylvania—before he headed out to France. Olympic wrestling events begin August 5.
Your faith came about through wrestling, right?
I’ve always been addicted to sports. I wanted to be in the NFL. And then I stopped growing. So I thought, I guess I’ll try to be the best wrestler. I had a lot of success and I won, but I wasn’t wrestling to my potential because I was afraid of losing. I felt like if I lost, then I wouldn’t be as valuable a person, and I’d be embarrassed. I would get tight and not be able to compete even near to the way I could practice.
I moved to the Olympic training center my senior year of high school, and the coaches asked me to start coming to a Bible study with them. I said, “Yeah, I’ll go.” I would jump off a bridge if they told me to. I just wanted to win world and Olympic titles, and if they thought studying the Bible would help, then I’d do it. So I went to the Bible studies. Never read a Bible before. I used to think, How can anyone read it? It’s so big, and the words are so small. But I started enjoying the stories from the Bible. And then I moved to Ohio State and started going to Bible studies there.
But I wasn’t fully committed. I ...