Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold by Mark Schultz & David Thomas

Author:Mark Schultz & David Thomas [Schultz, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

Destroying a Champion

CHAPTER 11

Just “Coach”

There wasn’t much privacy in the apartment I rented in my dad’s house. My apartment on the second floor was more like a hallway. There were stairs at the back of house, but it was easier for Dave, Nancy, and whoever was renting out the third upstairs room at the time to go back and forth from downstairs and their apartments by walking through my room than to use the stairs and walk outside around to the front.

Sharing upstairs with others and having them passing through my apartment made getting good sleep difficult. But rent was high in the Palo Alto area, and Dad gave us a break on the rent even though I didn’t want charity. I tried twice to have a roommate to split rent with me, but that took away even more of the little privacy I did have. Without a roommate, most of my low salary went to paying my rent of $550 a month and taxes, leaving not much money for food. As much as I loved being in the same house as my dad and Dave, my living conditions were uncomfortable.

Between the US Open and the World Team Trials, I was in my apartment waiting for practice when I received a phone call from someone identifying himself as a chief surgeon for something at Stanford University Medical Center. He told me that I would be receiving a phone call from a man named John du Pont. He told me that du Pont was a bigwig heavy hitter, and he wanted to vouch for du Pont before we talked.

I had never heard of this du Pont guy before and the doctor didn’t give me a hint what he wanted with me.

I was curious why the guy had called and why a chief surgeon would need to vouch for du Pont. I wondered if something was wrong or off with du Pont. What made the call stranger was that the surgeon didn’t come across as comfortable calling me. But I figured, What the hell? I don’t have anything else going for me.

Later that afternoon, du Pont called and introduced himself as starting an NCAA Division I wrestling program from scratch at Villanova University outside Philadelphia, and he wanted to talk to me about coming there as an assistant coach.

“How much would it take to bring you here?” he asked.

The figure $24,000 was in my head. If I had known then what I would soon learn about du Pont, I would have said $300,000, and he probably would have said okay. But $24,000 would have been more than Dave was making at Stanford even after having my salary added to his, and I wasn’t looking for anything more than an average assistant’s job in a stable environment. So that was the amount I gave du Pont.

Du Pont said he would get back to me.

It turned out that du Pont had first called Dave. Dave had that reputation as one of the greatest technicians and greatest wrestlers in the world, and he was well-liked.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.