Wrestler with no hope still having fun By Steve Simmons, SUN MEDIA

BEIJING - The least likely of all Canadian Olympians - another without any chance of getting near the podium - is a 38-year-old father of four who basically trained himself and paid his way to his only Olympic Games.

But don’t even try to tell Ari Taub, the Calgary lawyer, he isn’t a winner.

He’s having the time of his life here, having spent what he says is “more than a hundred grand” living the athlete’s life that was stolen from him in his prime due to injury.

Where to start with Taub’s story?

You can begin with the fact he is a Greco-Roman wrestler in a country that doesn’t really acknowledge the event. We don’t have a team, a coach, a program, anything.

Other athletes can complain about lack of support: He doesn’t get any and isn’t necessarily complaining.

You can move on to the fact to that Taub qualified for the Olympics without beating anybody. All he did was step on a scale.

There were three wrestlers in his weight class for his geographical section of the qualifying and two had already pre-qualified for the Games by past performances.

That meant, all Taub had to do was travel to the event weigh-in and his ticket to the Olympics was punched.

And does he have any chance in the Greco-Roman competition that begins and ends on Thursday? Even he doesn’t think so.

“Why do it, people ask me? A lot of people think I’m crazy. But this is for fun. It’s great. This is the pinnacle of amateur athletics. This is why athletes get up every morning and train. So they can go to the Olympics, get a medal, and go home happy.

“I don’t think coming here and getting a medal will change your life. So I do this for internal satisfaction. You set a goal and try and get better. I’ve done that.”

A father of two sets of twins, the 260-pound Taub was an Olympic contender in the early 1990s but never made a Canadian team. This is his personal do-over.

“I don’t think it’s very often in life you get a chance to grieve over something you’ve done and then get a chance to actually do it,” said Taub. “What I’m doing now is the best thing I can think of doing. I’m at the Olympics. How cool is that? I’m hanging out in the village the whole time, talking to athletes. Lots of my teammates here won’t talk to other athletes (from other countries). I think one of the best things is talking to your competitors, getting to know them, hanging out. I’m just trying to soak it all in.

“When I was younger, I went to international competitions and didn’t have a good time. Then in 1993, I hurt my neck and I probably spent a thousand nights thinking, if I could only wrestle again, what would I do differently? Now, I’m doing everything I wanted to do and didn’t do.

“Who wouldn’t want to do that with their life?”