Rulon Gardner’s highs, lows since Olympic wrestling gold tracked in film

Rulon Gardner
AP
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Rulon Gardner is living a quiet life, just the way he likes it.

He is 48 now, sells insurance and has a second job coaching wrestling at a Salt Lake City-area high school.

It’s been 20 years since Gardner, a 2,000-to-1 underdog, beat three-time gold medalist Aleksandr Karelin in the Greco Roman heavyweight final at the Sydney Games in one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

His story didn’t end there. Not by a long shot.

“My life,” he said in an interview, “has been a roller coaster.”

Winning gold was the start of a ride that began with the farm boy from Wyoming becoming an instant celebrity.

Just as he was easing back into his old life, he was the talk of the nation again when a harrowing snowmobiling outing left him with frostbite so severe it cost him a toe and all feeling in his feet. From there followed a motorcycle accident, an improbable comeback to take bronze in 2004, a plane crash, weighing in topless at 474 pounds on “The Biggest Loser” reality show and losing millions after getting taken in a real estate scam.

All that and more are chronicled in “RULON,” a documentary coming soon on the Olympic Channel.

Adam Irving, the director, said he was 18 at the time of the 2000 Olympics and unfamiliar with Gardner’s story until he was approached about making the film.

“I had to look up ‘Rulon Gardner,’” Irving said. “Within 10 seconds of reading his Wikipedia page, I knew that it would be hard to mess up the film because his life story has so many dramatic moments you couldn’t make that stuff up.”

Karelin is compared to fictional superhuman Russian boxer Ivan Drago from “Rocky IV.” Before meeting Gardner, the wrestler known as the “Russian Bear” won 887 of 888 matches and had not surrendered a point in six years or been beaten in 14. His patented move was the the terrifying reverse body lift in which he would throw his opponent feet first over his head.

Gardner had never finished higher than fifth in an international competition and struggled to get past his semifinal opponent in Sydney. The media portrayed the gold-medal match as a coronation for Karelin as he headed into retirement.

“When I walked out there, yeah, I was nervous,” Gardner said two decades later. “Did I believe in myself? Yeah. Did I think I could beat him? No. Did I have a chance? 100 percent.”

The film captures the rapture of Gardner beating the world’s greatest wrestler, but this isn’t just an underdog story. Improbable Olympic glory defines Gardner, but so do the near-death experiences and other unfortunate events that come his way.

Gardner is the narrator, with comments from his former coach and journalists who covered his story. Some of the archived video, particularly footage of the treatment for his frostbite, had never been shown before.

The opening shots have Gardner carrying a calf and knocking around a friend’s dairy farm near Logan, Utah. Gardner’s family no longer has the Wyoming dairy farm where he grew up.

For the youngest of Reed and Virginia Gardner’s nine children, childhood was all about hard work and chores. Among classmates he was an object of ridicule for being overweight and having a learning disability that put him at a fifth-grade reading level when he graduated from high school. He had a contentious relationship with his dad. His mother was a buffer between the two and an enduring source of love and support.

Wrestling provided escape from the grind of farm life, yet he didn’t make his high school’s varsity team until his senior year. He left the University of Nebraska with a hard-earned degree in physical education and began competing internationally in 1996.

The “Miracle on the Mat” turned him into an American hero. He made the rounds on the talk-show circuit, rubbed elbows with A-listers and amassed large sums of money thanks to endorsement deals.

Bad luck and bad decision-making ensued, never more than in 2002 when he got separated from his snowmobiling party in the Wyoming wilderness. He rode aimlessly as darkness fell, ended up in a shallow river and trudged through snow to a stand of trees. Wet and with no blankets or food, he spent the night in sub-zero temperatures. Searchers found him the next morning.

Perhaps his lowest point came when he filed for bankruptcy in 2012. A deal to develop a hot springs went bad and Gardner was stuck owing almost $3 million. He had to sell his gold and bronze medals, which he has since recouped, and auctioned off other memorabilia.

Not addressed in the documentary were Gardner’s Mormon faith and his four failed marriages.

“Those are kind of private,” Gardner said. “There are some things you don’t bring up.”

His lifelong battle with his weight was not off limits. In fact, it’s an underlying theme, and a scene of him in his kitchen talking to his tiny dog is particularly moving. He wouldn’t disclose his weight during a recent interview, but the math indicates he’s over 400.

He said he’s lost 30 pounds in the last month, thanks to working with a coach and cutting refined sugars and processed food from his diet. He has said his goal is to get back close to his wrestling weight of 265.

“I have well over 150 pounds more to lose,” he said.

Gardner sold medical equipment before joining an insurance agency in Payson, Utah, two years ago. About the same time he was hired as head wrestling coach at Herriman (Utah) High School.

It strikes him a bit funny, after all he’s gone through, that he’s happily settled into an insurance career.

“It’s all about mitigating risk, making better choices,” he said. “People ask me, ‘What do you know about safety?’ I’m like, ‘Let me tell you some stories.’”

MORE: Olympic wrestlers tie for gold medal, 8 years after the competition

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Madison Chock, Evan Bates win an ice dance world title for the ages

Madison Chock, Evan Bates
Getty
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After 12 years and three Olympics together, Madison Chock and Evan Bates won their first world title in ice dance, becoming the oldest gold medalists in the event and the second U.S. couple to win.

Chock, 30, and Bates, 34, won worlds in Saitama, Japan, totaling 226.01 points between the rhythm dance and free dance for their first gold after three previous silver or bronze medals.

Despite Chock’s fluke fall in the middle of Saturday’s free dance, they prevailed by 6.16 over Italians Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri. Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier took bronze.

“We wouldn’t be sitting here today without many of those challenges that we faced, not just this season, but through all the many seasons of our career,” Chock said. “We really persevered and showed a lot of grit, and, I think, maybe our performance today was a little reflection of that — perseverance and grit yet again. That little blip in the middle was so fast and so unexpected.”

All of the medalists were in their 30s, a first for any figure skating discipline at worlds since World War II, in an event that included none of last year’s Olympic medalists. None have decided whether they will continue competing next season.

FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Results

French Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, who won last year’s Olympic and world titles, skipped this season on an indefinite and possibly permanent break from competition. Olympic silver medalists Viktoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov have been barred from competing since last March due to the blanket ban on Russians for the war in Ukraine. Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, the Olympic bronze medalists, retired.

Chock and Bates, the top returning couple from last season, became the oldest couple to win the ice dance at worlds or the Olympics.

Birthdates are hard to come by for the earliest world champions from Great Britain in the 1950s — before ice dancing became an Olympic event in 1976 — but the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame confirmed many ages, as did Brit Paul Thomas, a 1956 gold medalist who now coaches in Canada.

Chock and Bates join their former training partners, Meryl Davis and Charlie White, as the lone Americans to win a world title in ice dance. Davis and White did it in 2011 and 2013, then in their final competition in 2014 became the first (and so far only) U.S. couple to win an Olympic ice dance title.

Chock and Bates’ competitive future is uncertain, but they are committed to a summer 2024 wedding.

Perhaps no ice dancers, and few, if any, figure skaters since World War II worked this long and hard at the elite level to reach the top podium step.

Each was looking for a new partner in 2011 when they teamed up, a year after Bates placed 11th in his Olympic debut with Emily Samuelson.

After Davis and White stopped competing, Chock and Bates ascended as the next top U.S. couple in the nation’s strongest figure skating discipline.

For years, it looked like their peak came at the 2015 World Championships, when they led after the short dance and then posted their best free dance score of the season. But Papadakis and Cizeron relegated them to silver minutes later with a breakout performance.

The next season, Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani overtook Chock and Bates as the top U.S. couple. When the Shibutanis stepped away from competition in 2018, Hubbell and Donohue inherited the American throne.

Chock and Bates endured her ankle injury in the 2018 Olympic season (they were ninth at those Games, a nadir), her concussion after fainting on a walk on a hot Montreal day in 2020 and a fourth-place finish at last year’s Olympics, missing a medal by 3.25 points.

They did earn an Olympic medal in the team event that will be gold or silver, pending the resolution of Russian Kamila Valiyeva‘s doping case.

“When I think about the totality of our career, I’m struck by what our coaches have done for us and the lifeline that they gave us five years ago,” Bates said, noting their move from Michigan to Montreal in 2018. “After PyeongChang, we could have easily been done.”

Chock and Bates ranked second in the world this season after the fall Grand Prix Series. Things changed the last two months.

In January, Chock and Bates won the U.S. title by the largest margin under a 13-year-old scoring system, with what Bates called probably the best skating of their partnership. In February, Chock and Bates won the Four Continents Championships with the best total score in the world this season to that point.

Meanwhile, Gilles and Poirier, the top couple in the fall, lost momentum by missing their nationals and Four Continents due to Gilles’ appendectomy.

World championships highlights air Saturday from 8-10 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com/live and the NBC Sports app.

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2023 World Figure Skating Championships results

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2023 World Figure Skating Championships in Saitama, Japan, top 10 and notable results …

Women
Gold: Kaori Sakamoto (JPN) — 224.61
Silver: Lee Hae-In (KOR) — 220.94
Bronze: Loena Hendrickx (BEL) — 210.42
4. Isabeau Levito (USA) — 207.65
5. Mai Mihara (JPN) — 205.70
6. Kim Chae-Yeon (KOR) — 203.51
7. Nicole Schott (GER) — 197.76
8. Kimmy Repond (SUI) — 194.09
9. Niina Petrokina (EST) — 193.49
10. Rinka Watanabe (JPN) — 192.81
12. Amber Glenn (USA) — 188.33
15. Bradie Tennell (USA) — 184.14

Men (Short Program)
1. Shoma Uno (JPN) — 104.63
2. Ilia Malinin (USA) — 100.38
3. Cha Jun-Hwan (KOR) — 99.64
4. Keegan Messing (CAN) — 98.75
5. Kevin Aymoz (FRA) — 95.56
6. Jason Brown (USA) — 94.17
7. Kazuki Tomono (JPN) — 92.68
8. Daniel Grassl (ITA) — 86.50
9. Lukas Britschgi (SUI) — 86.18
10. Vladimir Litvintsev (AZE) — 82.71
17. Sota Yamamoto (JPN) — 75.48
22. Andrew Torgashev (USA) — 71.41

FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Broadcast Schedule

Pairs
Gold: Riku Miura/Ryuichi Kihara (JPN) — 222.16
Silver: Alexa Knierim/Brandon Frazier (USA) — 217.48
Bronze: Sara Conti/Niccolo Macii (ITA) — 208.08
4. Deanna Stellato-Dudek/Maxime Deschamps (CAN) — 199.97
5. Emily Chan/Spencer Howe (USA) — 194.73
6. Lia Pereira/Trennt Michaud (CAN) — 193.00
7. Maria Pavlova/Alexei Sviatchenko (HUN) — 190.67
8. Anastasia Golubova/Hektor Giotopoulos Moore (AUS) — 189.47
9. Annika Hocke/Robert Kunkel (GER) — 184.60
10. Alisa Efimova/Ruben Blommaert (GER) — 184.46
12. Ellie Kam/Danny O’Shea (USA) — 175.59

Ice Dance
Gold: Madison Chock/Evan Bates (USA) — 226.01
Silver: Charlene Guignard/Marco Fabbri (ITA) — 219.85
Bronze: Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier (CAN) — 217.88
4. Lilah Fear/Lewis Gibson (GBR) — 214.73
5. Laurence Fournier Beaudry/Nikolaj Soerensen (CAN) — 214.04
6. Caroline Green/Michael Parsons (USA) — 201.44
7. Allison Reed/Saulius Ambrulevicius (LTU) — 199.20
8. Natalie Taschlerova/Filip Taschler (CZE) — 196.39
9. Juulia Turkkila/Matthias Versluis (FIN) — 193.54
10. Christina Carreira/Anthony Ponomarenko (USA) — 190.10
11. Kana Muramoto/Daisuke Takahashi (JPN) — 188.87

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