From Milo to Rulon: from beating an "unbeatable" foe to coming back from a tragic injury, American wrestler Rulon Gardner credits both faith and family for his persistence in getting the job done

New American, The, June 28, 2004 by William Norman Grigg

Thousands of years ago, a remarkable man named Milo was born in Croton, a Greek colony in Italy. When Milo was a youngster, his father gave him a small calf to raise. According to legend, Milo--who was unusually large at birth, and quickly developed into a precociously strong youth--took to carrying the baby bull on his shoulders.

Quite often, Milo would carry the calf a considerable distance to watch the older boys training at the local palaestra, or wrestling academy. By following this regimen for as long as he could, Milo quickly developed into a young man of Herculean strength. In the year 540 B.C., Milo claimed his first of what would be six championships in the Greek Olympiad, thereby becoming "the most illustrious of athletes," in the words of the ancient historian Strabo.

American wrestler Rulon Gardner, who will represent our nation at the Athens Olympics in August, comes from a background somewhat similar to Milo's. Growing up on a dairy farm in tiny Afton, Wyoming, Rulon's first sparring partners were young cows and older brothers. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics Rulon confronted an opponent who may have made the legendary Milo flinch: Russia's three-time gold medalist Alexander Karelin. The 13-time world champion hadn't so much as surrendered a point in more than 10 years.

A product of Russia's forbidding Novosibirsk region, the six-foot, four-inch Karelin was a 286-pound mass of conditioned muscle, much of it acquired by running through hip-deep snowdrifts while carrying a huge log under each arm. His trademark technique, the Karelin lift, was a reverse-body slam in which he would wrap his arms around an opponent's waist--a well-conditioned, fiercely resisting athlete weighing more than 250 pounds--and drive him head-first into the mat.

Growing Up Tough

Rulon's childhood winters often rivaled those of Siberia. The youngest of nine children, Rulon's grappling career began with scuffles to determine which of the siblings would have to do the chores. From an early age, Rulon found himself allotted more than his share of the arduous work, lifting large hay bales and toting large buckets of milk.

At school, Rulon found himself socially isolated, in part because of his size, but also because, as he puts it, "I was a slow reader." Enduring taunts of "fatso" made Rulon awkward and self-conscious, but it also drove him to excel: "I had to push myself past what anybody said I could do."

Rulon's determination led him to adopt a training method of which Milo would have approved. "I always wrestled cows," he recalls. "On the farm, you just go in and wrestle them. We called it 'steer wrestling.' Sometimes you had to take them down and give them medicine or something. It gave me agility and a desire to work hard. Cows are very strong, not as strong as a horse but they are definitely strong. They are 2000 pounds, so you can't just stop in front of one and stop it. You have to jump in front of them and wrestle them to the ground."

Following in his older brother's footsteps, Rulon won a state wrestling championship as a senior at Star Valley High School. At Ricks College in Idaho, Rulon won a national junior college title; at the University of Nebraska (where he earned a teaching degree), he brought back a gold medal from the Pan American Games. After finishing college in 1993, Rulon switched to Greco-Roman wrestling, a style in which competitors aren't allowed to attack each others' legs. Prior to the Sydney Games in 2000, Gardner had carved out an impressive historical niche by becoming the first American Greco competitor to win Cuba's Granma Cup, a feat he accomplished three times.

His achievements notwithstanding, Rulon was an overwhelming underdog as he strode to the mat for the Gold Medal match in Sydney. A previous meeting with Karelin had ended with the Russian defeating him 5-0 as a result of the dreaded Karelin lift. Reporters and celebrities thronged the stands as Gardner and Karelin shook hands before the match. International Olympic Committee (IOC) Chairman Juan Antonio Sammarach was on hand, seated with a group of Russian dignitaries, in anticipation of presenting Karelin with his fourth gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling--a modern record. Also seated in that section was Dr. Henry Kissinger, a key adviser to the IOC and longtime ally in official corruption with the worst elements of the Russian elite.

As Gardner and Karelin clinched at the center of the mat, everybody in the stadium knew Rulon had no chance to win--everyone except Gardner, that is.

Miracle on the Mat

Wrestling has been described as "full-contact chess," involving strategy as well as strength, stamina and skill. Rulon knew that he couldn't out-muscle KareHn, and that he couldn't afford to surrender a point for inactivity by simply evading the Russian's efforts to score. For the three regulation periods of the match, the wrestlers pummeled for position, seeking upper-body leverage to score a takedown. "It was like trying to push a horse around," Gardner--who was in a position to make the comparison--would later comment.