Donna Spencer, THE CANADIAN PRESS

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Travis Cross will probably take the title of Canadian Olympian with the biggest cheering section in Beijing.

The 27-year-old wrestler from Port Alberni, B.C., expects to have 66 people from his hometown in China to watch him grapple for gold. "It's everyone from the wrestling team to my parents to family and friends to the mayor of Port Alberni," Cross said Friday prior to the opening cermonies.

"It's going to be kind of cool to have the biggest cheering section in the venue."

The Alberni Valley Wrestling Club organized the trip and Cross's horde was scheduled to board a plane for China on Friday.

Since he doesn't start wrestling until the second week of the Games, the group will tour China before arriving in Beijing armed with flags and face paint.

They'll stay at the Canadian International School, where the wrestling team spent the first few days of the Games training away from the distractions of the athletes village.

"Tickets for everyone wasn't easy," Cross said. "It was a process over about a year over the four different stages of ticket sales to get them all tickets."

Cross is the national champion in the 84-kilogram weight class the past three years and was eighth at last year's world championships.

He works as a firefighter in Port Alberni, which is a city of about 26,000 on Vancouver Island. He and wife Melissa and have a son named Nickolas.

Two years ago he travelled by ferry on his days off to train at the Burnaby Wrestling Club, but when it became too taxing to juggle job, family and that commute he considered quitting.

The community raised money to get him world-class training partners and allow him to train at home.

T-shirts and decals were sold bearing a logo of Cross wrestling a Chinese panda in front of the Great Wall of China.

So when Cross steps on the wrestling mat on Aug. 21, he won't feel lonely.

"It's phenomenal of course," he said. "It's going to feel a bit like wrestling back home. I'm just going to really feed off their energy. I'm really happy that they're all here."