BRANTFORD, Ontario — This past summer, Ed Zinger took his skills on the mat, which he gained over 40 years participating in wrestling as an athlete, a coach and a referee, to the Tokyo Olympics. Zinger was the only Canadian official to referee wrestling at this past summer Olympics.

Zinger wrestled in high school and earned a spot on the Lakehead University wrestling team. After spending five years at Lakehead, injuries mounted, which stopped him from continuing his competitive career. But that was when he started refereeing.

According to the Welland Tribune, Zinger discovered he had an aptitude for refereeing and recognized that he had an intuitive grasp of the rules.

“It was at that time that I started refereeing and I was good at it,” he said. “I didn’t understand why it was good at it, but I was.”

In 1995, Zinger became certified to referee at national level events, and by 2002 he began teaching workshops for other referees on how to fine-tune their skills. He continued to work hard cultivating his skills and pursued becoming an official at the international level. In 2004, he became an international official, and joined what is now United World Wrestling (UWW). Currently, there are only three other Canadians with the qualification to referee in international tournaments with the UWW.

Zinger has officiated in 17 different countries for competitions ranging from the World Wrestling Championships, Wrestling World Cup and the Pan American Games. But being selected for the Olympics was one of the most difficult things to accomplish.

Zinger was selected out of 43 referees from around the world to officiate in Tokyo. The selection involved scrutiny of his refereeing career, and he even noted that one bad call could’ve cost him a spot at the Olympics.

After 30 years of continuously coaching and refereeing young athletes, Zinger is still extremely passionate about the sport. Speaking with the Welland Tribune, Zinger mentioned he enjoyed wrestling because of the strategy involved.

“Wrestling’s like a standing, dynamic chess game,” he said.

Since 2001, Zinger has been a coach at W. Ross Macdonald School in Brantford and has worked with the wrestling programs throughout Brant County and Brantford. Offering a wonderful campus filled with lush greenery and timeless redbrick buildings, W. Ross Macdonald in Brantford is a school for visually impaired students who come from all over Ontario because of the programs that are offered there.

Zinger has acted as a bridge for the school into the surrounding community, and under his tutelage, he has provided the high school athletes in Brantford with an opportunity to come inside W. Ross Macdonald and to train in their facilities. He has also provided both the athletes from W. Ross Macdonald and the surrounding schools with world-class training which prepares them for the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Association (OFSAA) championships, the highest level of high school sports in Ontario, as well as future university wrestling careers.

Zinger already has his sights on being an official at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. But with just three years until the next Olympics, there is still a lot of preparation that needs to be done.

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