GAVELLI o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-11 published
Pint-sized scrapper 'liked wrestling more than eating'
Stellar career in the ring was marred only by the near-miss loss
of an Olympic medal
By Tom HAWTHORN,
Special to The Globe and Mail Thursday, December
11, 2003 - Page R11
He was a Regina stonecutter who used his strength to good effect
in the wrestling ring. Vern
PETTIGREW, who has died at 95, was
an athlete whose career was marred only by the near-miss loss
of an Olympic medal.
Competing for Canada, Mr.
PETTIGREW finished in fourth place
in the featherweight division of the freestyle-wrestling competition
at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. The 28-year-old stonecutter with
a chiselled physique had dominated his Swedish opponent when
the match suddenly ended with Mr.
PETTIGREW disqualified for
using an illegal hold. The Swede went on to claim the bronze
medal, while Mr.
PETTIGREW spent the next 67 years contemplating
the unfairness of a verdict that denied him Olympic glory.
"One call made all the difference," he told The Regina Leader-Post
in 1996. "You can't quarrel, but it was terrible. It was a legal
hold, but they said it was illegal. I could have been standing
on the podium, but you can't cry about it."
Even before the devastating verdict, Canadian wrestlers had expressed
their unhappiness with the officiating at the tournament.
The team felt European officials, versed in the more rigid dictates
of the Greco-Roman discipline, were unfamiliar with the rules
of freestyle, or catch-as-catch-can, wrestling. For instance,
the Canadians relied heavily on leg holds, only to discover the
judges did not award points for the manoeuvre. Canada claimed
only one of 18 freestyle medals awarded at the 1936 Games, a
bronze for Joseph
SCHLEIMER, a lightweight from Toronto.
Mr. PETTIGREW retained his amateur status after returning from
the Games, continuing to dominate his weight class in Canada.
He stepped away from the mat as a competitor in 1940, having
won five national championships. He was also known as an eager
participant in exhibition matches, willing to take on all comers.
"I liked wrestling more than eating," he once said.
John Vernon
PETTIGREW was born on March 30, 1908, in Durham,
Ontario He moved with his family to Biggar, Saskatchewan., two
years later, before settling in Regina in 1919.
Wrestling was perhaps a natural sport for a pint-sized boy born
as part of a baker's dozen brood of
PETTIGREWs. He learned the
formal rules and tactics of the sport at the old Young Men's
Christian Association in Regina, "a stinkin' Y with a pool as
big as my kitchen," he told the Leader-Post.
Wrestling was conducted in a small basement room reached by a
long flight of stairs. "It was never washed. No wonder we got
big scabs on our knees."
He claimed his first Dominion featherweight crown in 1933 and
dominated his weight division in Saskatchewan, where he won 10
provincial championships.
He was accompanied on the long journey by train and ocean liner
to Germany in 1936 by fellow Regina wrestler George
CHIGA. A
210-pound (95-kilogram) heavyweight, Mr.
CHIGA dwarfed his featherweight
friend, who weighed closer to 134 pounds (61 kilograms).
One of the more memorable experiences in the athlete's camp was
Mr. PETTIGREW's first viewing of that science-fiction dream called
television. He also met the great American track athlete Jesse
OWENS, whose humility and friendliness in trying circumstances
Mr. PETTIGREW never forgot. Like many of the athletes, however,
Mr. PETTIGREW remained unaware of, or unconcerned about, the
intentions of the Nazi regime, for which the Games were a propaganda
exercise.
A first-round victory over Karel
KVACEK of Czechoslovakia impressed
Canadian
Press correspondent Elmer
DULMAGE, who wrote that Mr.
PETTIGREW "gives a pretty fair imitation of lightning."
The
Regina wrestler defeated Marco
GAVELLI of Italy and Hector
RISKE of Belgium, but was pinned at two minutes, 13 seconds of
a fourth-round match by Francis
MILLARD of the United States.
The controversial disqualification against Gosta
JONSSON of Sweden
eliminated Mr.
PETTIGREW from the medals. Kustaa
PIHLAJAMAKI
of Finland won the featherweight gold, while Mr.
MILLARD took
silver and Mr.
JONSSON got bronze.
Mr. PETTIGREW retired from wrestling not long after joining the
Regina fire department in 1939. He retired as battalion fire
chief in 1973. He then worked part-time at a local funeral home,
which years later would handle his remains.
Mr. PETTIGREW, who died in Regina on October 29, leaves a daughter
and two sons. He was predeceased by his wife Jean; by his eldest
son, Robert; and by all 12 of his siblings.
In all the years since leaving Berlin, he never quite overcame
the sense that he had been robbed of a chance for an Olympic
medal. "It always bugs you," he said.
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