IN a musty carpeted training room upstairs at Sydney University's HK Ward gym, a gentle giant is taking his first tentative steps back into the sport he adored but on which he had turned his back.
Summer rain means the windows are closed. The air is unbearably muggy but the giant, hunched in a chair too small for his 115 kilogram frame, sits quietly with a dozen other volunteers, listening to an official talk about how they might become referees at the London Olympics.
Hassene Fkiri was the pariah of Australia's 2010 Commonwealth Games team. He lost his cool in the gold medal Greco-Roman wrestling match, forfeited victory after lashing out at his opponent, flipped his middle finger at the referee - twice - and was stripped of his silver medal.
The story made international headlines, prompted a harsh public reprimand from chef de mission and Australian sporting legend Steve Moneghetti and earned Fkiri a place on a multitude of newspapers' end-of-year ''2010 lowlights'' lists.
But if the personal shame of letting himself swing so out of control was not enough, if the humiliation of being yanked out of the medal winners' line ahead of the presentation could be endured, and if he managed to choke out the emotional public apology issued at the Australian team's request, it was the isolation that followed that broke his spirit.
''I wasn't allowed to leave the village,'' Fkiri, 37, says this week during a break for lunch during training. ''I think it's too much. I'd been punished inside the arena and I'd been punished outside and not leaving the village was [like being] the ultimate outsider. It's like being a schoolboy. That's why it was a bit for me at that time, 'I'm done'.''
He has not wrestled competitively since. ''I think it destroyed Hassene more than anybody,'' says Colin Holland, secretary of the NSW Wrestling Association. ''It was upsetting that he did lose control in the situation but there were sanctions and he paid the price.''
Kuldip Bassi, the manager of the Australian wrestling team in Delhi and Wrestling Australia president, said the outburst surprised everybody in the local wrestling scene.
''He was a good guy, I don't know why, he just lost his temper in India, we were very disappointed and he was very disappointed,'' Bassi says. ''It's tragic for him, tragic for Australian wrestling and … for everybody.''
How then is he here, perspiring in a university gym for a sport the Tunisian-born construction worker vowed to leave behind for good?
''I've had a few ups and downs and sometimes I am thinking 'I don't want to deal with [the sport] any more' and you do that for a few months but you're just ignoring yourself,'' he says.
''You try to run away from things and you can't do it. Seriously, I tried a few times to leave everything and do something different but it's always there, I'm always thinking about it.''
Delhi itself was a comeback. Fkiri dropped 21 kilograms in a matter of months to make the 96 kg weight class after realising, once again, that wrestling wasn't yet out of his system.
It was the two-time African Champion's first international competition representing Australia since his defection from Tunisia following the Sydney Olympics. It went so well until it all came undone.
Back in 2000, Fkiri left his national team because of ''internal politics''. He tried to continue wrestling competitively in Australia but the chronic underdevelopment of the sport here - few sponsors, little money, a shaky organisational structure - meant he had to work to survive.
The contrast between the structured life of a full-time professional wrestler in Tunisia and the life here of a new immigrant with basic English and no skills, was a shock.
Fkiri wondered for many years if he had made the right choice. His wrestling friends at home - men he spent six days a week with from his teenage years until the day he quietly slipped back out the departure lounge of Sydney Airport - went on to coach or referee in the national squad and lead comfortable lives.
''A lot of times I wondered [what have I done],'' he says. ''Actually, until now. Until now, I was thinking 'was that a good step'.''
He still doesn't know why he had that meltdown on the mat in Delhi and will regret it for the rest of his days, he says as the rain pelts down.
But as he stepped onto the mat during this weekend's Oceania Championships - in a referee's tie for the first time - he will make peace with the sport that took him far away from his family and to the depths of despair. Perhaps more importantly, he will make peace with his choices.
''I'm satisfied with all the things I've done in my life, I'm not regretting the [choices I made] … but if I go back to before [2000] I will still stay again in Australia,'' he says.
''Australia, you work hard, but Australia teaches you to be a man because when I used to live [in Tunisia] I was too controlled … you wake up, go to training, come back, it's all done for me, I don't have to think.
''When I came here it was hard … to run my life because I had to think about how to get money, had to think about work … there's a lot of things I've been taught in this country that you don't know about there. That's why I'm thinking I'm really blessed.''
Email a friend