If you blinked, you’d miss it.
Everything Lithuanian arm-wrestler Dalia Medziausyte, 30, has spent the last seven years training for lasts slightly longer than a hummingbird heartbeat.
“It’s an explosion,” said the 5-foot-11 redhead of the flash-pin technique that puts her in the winning column a split-second after the referee yells, “Ready . . . go!”
Known only as Dalia to fellow wrestlers, her first name has become a symbol of fear and admiration among her opponents in 80-kilogram class at the 23rd Annual World Armwrestling Federation World Championship.
Ironically, the most powerful biceps in Lithuania have residency in Chicago. When not pulling her opponents’ wrists to the padded competition table, Dalia pounds the knots out of her customers at Hinsdale’s Zazu Salon and Day Spa, where she works as a message therapist.
Dalia says not many of her clients or co-workers know about her three European championships and 14 arm-wrestling medals from world competitions. A few know that she’s applying for U.S. citizenship and hoping to pull, as aficionados call the sport, for the U.S. team.
“I never say what I am,” said Dalia. “I don’t like so much talking.”
The same philosophy applies to the competition circle. The 170-pound Lithuania native towers over the 3-foot-4 inch aluminum table. Muscular, but slim within her frame, Dalia lays her elbow on the table and looks right through her opponent. She never makes eye contact, never smiles. Matches seldom last longer than a single tick of the clock.
Friday, in three short matches, she captured the title of Ladies’ Left world champion in her division. The following day, Dalia plans to bring home a companion gold medal with her right arm — although speaking of such things is bad luck, she says.
In the evening, sitting in the hotel lounge, a brilliant smile replaces the serious, scowl of an hour earlier. This is the figure patrons of the Willow Springs dance club Bunkeris, a favorite hangout, would recognize.
“I love dancing,” Dalia said, decked out in calf-high leather boots and a tight-fitting purple long-sleeve shirt.
But competition, she loves more.
Speaking in broken, but expressive English, Dalia lacks only confidence in her vocabulary. She leans on coach/boyfriend Saulius Rakauskas, 38, for help in fleshing out her emotions.
The pair met two years ago in a Virginia Beach, Va., pulling tournament. Five years earlier, Dalia had begun pulling after seeing a arm-wrestling championship in Sweden.
Ever since, the daughter of a college administrator and a retired building manager has carved out a name for herself in the pulling world. She decided to remain in America, she says, because she “wanted to check my strength against the best in the world.” She moved to Chicago for its central location, arm-wrestling clubs and large Lithuanian community.
Friend Rimas Prankskus, 31, traveled to Springfield from Chicago with his daughter Milda, 4, to watch Dalia compete
“It’s a good opportunity to come here and concentrate on your sport,” he says. “In Lithuania, you don’t have enough time to make money to live and be an athlete. In America, there are more opportunities.”
All this is true, Dalia says, but she isn’t in it for the money. Few of the 480 athletes (48 of them women) from 26 countries in the tournament are sponsored. They come on their own dime, fueled by passion and dedication to the WAF.
“I love contact sports,” Dalia says, even though she never looks at her opponents. “I don’t see them; I just feel their arm. I just listen to the referee.”
During her two years in the States, she’s never lost a match. Because her job strengthens her hands, she only gears up before tournaments with three-hour training sessions, three to four times a week a month before competing. Stretching remains central, and Dalia sharpens her quickness by pulling a bicycle tube hooked to the corner of a table. Basketball and running are also part of the regimen, and Dalia can curl nearly her own weight with each arm.
In her career, she’s never been injured, nor caused an injury. In a sport when breaking bones can be a source of bragging rights, Dalia clasps her hands in thanks that her safety record is spotless.
“You can break an arm more easier in soccer, or out on the street,” she says.
Saturday, the big guns come out. Right-arm competition remains the loudest, largest draw of any tournament, this one reeking of Menthalatum muscle rub and secondhand cigarette smoke wafting in from the lobby.
Having shelved three opponents in the one-second win category, Dalia must square up against Team Canada’s Joyce King, 38, a bodybuilder from New Brunswick. King worked her way up from the bottom bracket after losing to Dalia that morning, and King knows she has to hit her hard out of the gate. All 1,200 athletes, support staff and their families are watching. After isolating herself all afternoon, pacing and warming her muscles in an arm-sock she knitted herself, Dalia steps up to the platform.
“You’re stronger than her Joyce. You are stronger!” yells one of King’s teammates. And it looks to be true. King’s superhero biceps are thicker than Dalia’s 17-inch upper arms.
But Dalia doesn’t yell, flex or offer any of the intimidating bravado displayed by other wrestlers. She simply chews her Trident gum and stares up at the ceiling. After 60 seconds of both pullers vying for an advantageous grip, the ref signals “go” and hands slip apart in a cloud of white hand chalk. To avoid another false start, their wrists are bound together with an inch-wide blue nylon strap.
“Ready . . . go!” and the Canadian powers Dalia’s right wrist into the table. The referee raises a hand in King’s direction, indicating a foul — not a win. King’s elbow slipped off the mat.
Each athlete is allowed 30 seconds out of the strap during competition, and Dalia walks over to confer with her corner.
Konstantinas Archipovas, president of the Lithuanian Armwrestling Federation, has no words — he just slaps her hard on both cheeks, startling Dalia and sending her back to the table.
The pullers lock up once again, more quickly this time as the strap is applied.
On “go,” it’s as if everyone inhales at once.
Crashing King’s right arm into the table, Dalia emits the only sound she’s unleashed all tournament: the roar of a champion.
“Somehow, I have a very smart body,” Dalia says after. “I just let my body go and it won.”
After seven years of work for seven matches equaling seven seconds, Dalia takes home world championship titles for her left and right arms.
The U.S. team won overall competition honors, edging out Canada by seven points. Russia won the most gold medals with 15, followed by Canada with 12 and the U.S. with nine.
Dalia scored the only gold medal for Lithuania. Whether she joins the U.S. team in Toronto for the 2004 WAF tournament is a matter of patience and paperwork.
“Once she gets citizenship, there’s nothing stopping her,” says Cobra Rhodes, 37, a high-profile American puller. “With no disrespect to our girls, this raises the bar.”
