Hillary Wolf walked onto the mat in Colorado Springs last fall craving a second helping of the success that had been heaped on her plate early in her career.
Every accomplishment in her life carried the same prefix. Former child actress. Former teenage judo prodigy. Former Olympian. Wolf wanted to claim her place in the present.
The October tournament was the first of three in five weeks that would determine whether Wolf would qualify for her second Olympic judo team. Many thinking bettors might have placed their wagers elsewhere.
Wolf had been shut out of major international events over the preceding 18 months. She was coming off knee surgery, a move to a higher weight class and a feud with her own federation. Only days before she had made a hurried, emotional trip back to Chicago, her hometown, to attend a wake for her grandmother, a woman so like her in body and spirit that the two often clashed: too much kinetic energy for one room.
But their bond was as tight as the colored belt cinched around Hillary's waist. Doris Wolf, a fearless traveler, asked to have her ashes scattered in Paris and Bali, and Hillary, the family's most frequent flyer, left Chicago with half the precious cargo in tow, intending to grant part of her grandmother's wish on her next trip to Europe.
Wolf walked out for the match inspired. Moments later her opponent slammed her, shoulder-first, into the mat.
Her older brother Brett was waiting for her afterward. In her distinctive, gravelly voice, she uttered two words he never had heard from her before: "It's over."
"The time between Olympics was the first time she had some self-doubt about her judo," Brett Wolf said. "As a kid she'd go months without losing a match. I'm sure her whole career flashed before her eyes and for one split second she wanted to feel sorry for herself. But she's a fighter and I knew she'd get her head back on straight."
Wolf won her next three matches in the loser's bracket to place third. That finish guaranteed her a trip to a tournament in Canada, where she won a silver medal and qualified for the Pan American Union senior finals in late November in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Her Olympic bid came down to the final match. Two minutes in, Wolf pinned Brazilian Catia Maia, gripping her as if she wanted to deprive her of breath itself.
When the judge signaled Wolf had won, she rolled over in relief, then jumped up, dancing and sobbing, the frustrations of the last two years dissipating like fog before sunshine.
"I've never experienced that kind of pressure in my life," Wolf said. "I have a different outlook on judo now. Before I wanted to win, I trained and that was it. My career is more thought-out now. I'm so much more prepared--older and wiser."
No time to relax
Wolf, 23, has been at the U.S. Olympic training center in Colorado Springs for much of the last five years. As she did before the Atlanta Olympics, she has spent much of the summer at home, training at Cohen's Judo Club in Buffalo Grove and sleeping in the Lincoln Park house where she grew up. A few weeks ago, she and Brett taught a youth clinic at another North Side judo academy.
A 5-foot-2-inch pony-tailed bundle of muscle who scorned ballet lessons as a child, Wolf moves around the gym with the economy of gesture cultivated by dancers. She horses around with one boy, rolls her eyes at another who is sniffling on the sideline. She throws 18 kids in a row, a construction worker slinging bags of cement. She gives her brother a dirty look when he is late to join her for a demonstration.
Finally she flops on the mat and brushes her hair out of her eyes.
"It's so much better to be here," she said. "I'm so much more relaxed than I would be at the training center."
Wolf generally isn't relaxed unless she is wearing herself out. A self-confessed organization freak, she lives by to-do lists and packs and repacks her bag for meets as if she were going on a Himalayan trek and needed to consider every ounce.
Her path to the last Olympics was one unbroken vector directed upward, from the day she was 5 and insisted on accompanying Brett to judo class, to her decision at 14 to quit acting and devote herself to the sport, to 1994, when she became the first American to win a junior judo world title. She met her current coach, Ed Liddie, that same year when she defeated his wife in a tournament.
Meticulous and driven, Wolf maintained top grades and played two sports at Francis Parker High School while traveling the globe for judo. She had four national championships in her pocket by the time she took on Amaryllis Savon of Cuba in the quarterfinals in Atlanta.
Despite the modest stature of her sport, Wolf was a media favorite in high demand in the weeks before the '96 Games. Articulate and camera-savvy from her years of acting, which included a bit part in "Home Alone" and feature roles in other films, Wolf did dozens of interviews and appeared on "The Today Show." The day she fought Savon in the 48-kilogram (106-pound) division, about 70 family members and friends were in the stands.
Wolf lost, and suddenly the event that had shimmered in the distance for so long vanished like the proverbial mirage. She resolutely put a finger over the valve in her competitive heart to try to keep it from leaking.
"I didn't have any feelings of wanting to retire," she said. "Even though I lost, all I could think was, `I want to do this again."'
She took two months off and went back to the mat, but it became increasingly clear that she could no longer stay strong at her fighting weight. Her longtime boyfriend Chris Saba, 30, a financial planner, knows a little about the subject: He is a Greco-Roman wrestler who twice has just missed making the U.S. Olympic team.
"She just grew up and got bigger," Saba said. "It was physical torture to lose that much weight when she was already so lean."
Liddie agreed. He was afraid the arduous process of making weight would kill Wolf's motivation and love for the sport.
"It was draining her energy level and she wasn't able to perform consistently," he said.
Wolf made the move to the 52 kg (114.4-pound) division in late 1997 and immediately felt healthier.
"It made a major difference in my training," she said. "Now I don't need to take a month before every tournament to lose weight."
In the past, Wolf cut muscle when she cut weight. Now she lifts weights, does intense cardiovascular workouts and doesn't need to be quite so exacting about her diet.
Moving up a division, however, meant facing an unfamiliar set of bigger, stronger rivals. Wolf registered decent results in her first couple of tournaments. Just as she was getting comfortable, she tore her right anterior cruciate ligament while competing in England in April 1998 and had to take four months off to rehabilitate after surgery.
When she returned to competition, she found herself behind in a number of ways, including the point system that determines which U.S. athletes are sent to major events.
The upshot was that Wolf, despite winning her fifth national title in 1999, missed the Pan American Games and the World Championships that year and found herself looking at a string of do-or-be-done meets for Olympic qualification. Characteristically, she also was carrying a full load of classes at the University of Colorado, where she is a year short of an English degree.
Then, in late September, 89-year-old Doris Wolf suffered the heart attack that eventually proved fatal. She was extremely close to Brett and Hillary. Doris Wolf was especially proud of her granddaughter's athletic achievements, although she persisted in calling her specialty "karate."
"She was a little spitfire... a tough broad, I guess you might call her," Hillary said.
"She was more a part of Hillary than anyone," Brett Wolf said. "Hillary grieved in her own way. "
Quest for a medal
There was a time when Wolf pushed her old show-business identity away like a shed snakeskin. People still recognize her from her movie roles. Sometimes she tells them they must be mistaken. But she has felt a little wistful about it recently.
"I'd like to say I might get back into it," she said.
Right now, however, she is not looking beyond Sept. 17 in Sydney, where she hopes to become the first U.S. woman to win an Olympic judo medal.
It also may be the last day of her competitive career.
"If she decides not to go on, she's one I'll really miss," Liddie said. "I'll miss her fiery attitude, her sincerity . . . she'll tell you `thank you.' Not many athletes do."