Olympian Jordan Burroughs driven to win more gold

Jordan Burroughs is nose deep in his four-year preparation for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

On Saturday, the wrestler from Sicklerville, N.J., won the gold medal at the Pan Am Games and will train for more than a month in Nebraska before the world championships in Las Vegas start Sept. 7. There's always another match, and the preparation rarely stops.

Nineteen days ago, he did take a break from the mat for a trip to Philadelphia, where he started making appearances at 7 a.m. When he finally sat down for breakfast with two representatives from Liberty Mutual on South Broad Street at 9:30, Burroughs looked down at a blue felt case with "London 2012 Summer Olympics" engraved on it.

Inside the case is what pulled him from TV appearance to TV appearance on that day. It's what has turned his life into an unending series of calculated steps. It's what made his 18th birthday not just the day he could vote, but the day he devoted everything to becoming the best freestyle wrestler in the world.

"You want to see it?" he asked those at the table, then opened the case to reveal his first gold medal.

With Rio now a summer away, he plans on giving it company.

"When I stepped off that podium in London it was pure joy and jubilation. Your lifetime of work has come to fruition, you're an Olympic gold medalist, and you're the best in the world," the 27-year old Olympian said.

"But now the clock restarts and someone else wants to be the next gold medalist, the next world champion. Are you going to let someone else be that? Or are you going to rightfully reclaim what you've already won."

After his freshman year at Nebraska in 2006, Burroughs compiled a 111-6 record in three seasons that included three Big 12 titles and two NCAA championships. When he graduated in 2011, he vaulted himself into freestyle wrestling and became the fourth wrestler in U.S. history to win an NCAA and world championship in the same year, competing in the 163-pound weight class.

Burroughs now lives in Lincoln, Neb., with his wife, Lauren, and their 1-year-old son, Beacon. In the coming months, he will travel to a handful of events before the U.S. Olympic wrestling trials in Iowa City in April.

Most of the preparation, however, will happen at Nebraska, where Burroughs is an assistant under head coach Mark Manning.

Six, sometimes seven days a week, Burroughs walks through the glass doors of the Cornhuskers' Hendricks Training Complex and past a picture of himself on the "Wrestling All-Americans" wall. He hits Hendricks' scarlet mats twice a day, breaks up the session with weights, and is training injury-free. Wrestling, with the help of his profile, is no longer on the margins of the Summer Olympics. His focus is straight ahead.

"I would put Jordan Burroughs next to Michael Jordan, LeBron James," said Manning, who coached Burroughs at Nebraska. "I can only imagine that [Burroughs] exemplifies the same commitment to being the best in the world. Not to just be a wrestler, not to just be on the world team, not to be on the Olympic team. He wants to be the best ever in America and then the world."

It's a goal that Burroughs is looking to get closer to at the 2016 Summer Games, but he's already thinking he'll need more time.

"I don't just want Rio," Burroughs told Manning in the spring. "I want Tokyo 2020, too."

Burroughs shut the felt case almost as soon as he opened it, tucking away what he sees as a past accomplishment with no bearing on his future.

"We're in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately society," Burroughs said. "If I don't win another gold in Brazil, this one doesn't mean much anymore."

Then it was on to another round of TV appearances at NBC and CBS. Then on to another year of training.

Then on to another Olympics, soon enough.