A learning disability made school difficult, as did his weight. Viewers know, at the very least, that this pudgy kid with horse manure on his arm will go on to be an Olympian, and the documentary does a phenomenal job laying out the odds Gardner overcame en route to two Olympic medals: his weight, his learning disability, the remote, small-town world that threatened to prevent him from ever leaving at all.
The film paints Gardner as a kid who struggled with every sport until he found wrestling. In reality, he won statewide accolades in football and shot put, too. It chronicles his state championship as a heavyweight on the mat, then sends him straight to the University of Nebraska, a farm boy made good. I felt like a traitor. Any time he and Gardner share a frame the obvious question is: How did Rulon Gardner beat this guy?
His mother was a buffer between the two and an enduring source of love and support. He left the University of Nebraska with a hard-earned degree in physical education and began competing internationally in 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 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 He had to sell his gold and bronze medals, which he has since recouped, and auctioned off other memorabilia.
His lifelong battle with his weight was not off limits. He has said his goal is to get back close to his wrestling weight of Wrestling has taken Gardner to 44 countries.
The Herriman High wrestling room has one regulation-sized circle, and the dark blue mat extends out to light blue padded walls. Gardner became famous as a Wyoming farm boy, but his Mormon family has ties back to Utah for generations. His great-great-grandfather Archibald Gardner was a bishop in the church and helped build the famed Salt Lake Temple.
When the high school team needed a new coach soon after that, he got the job. The four state qualifiers pair off. There are two lightweights and two heavyweights, making for convenient practice partners. Rulon draws on his own experience, knowing what made the best preparation for him before countless tournaments at the highest possible levels. He walks around the perimeter of the room, shoes off, thick white socks resting below his tree-trunk calves, and watches his kids spar.
Some of the advice is technical, some is motivational. You gotta get up! Nearly a dozen younger members of the team who failed to qualify for States are doing their own drills in one corner of the room. At the end of practice, Gardner has the team sit on a rolled-up mat in the corner of the room so he and the assistants can deliver a speech.
He talks to the state qualifiers about visualizing their day. After the speeches, assistant coach Rad Martinez gathers everyone in the center of the mat. He tells everyone to put their hands in. Gardner is rolling two full suitcases behind him through the corridor outside a series of ballrooms at a DoubleTree hotel in New Jersey. He turns the corner and ditches the Velcro brace on his right wrist. He pops his head in the back of the room, looking out at the men and women in business attire, sitting in rows and staring ahead at a PowerPoint presentation about the insurance industry.
Gardner stands in front of the crowd and runs through his well-rehearsed life story. From the Wyoming farm where he grew up the youngest of nine siblings, through his struggles as a student with dyslexia, all the way to the Olympic medal stand, to his night on the mountain and back to the Olympic podium. He talks about his Seven Steps to Success, which are outlined in his autobiography.
He apologizes to the room for his hoarse voice, which he blames on his coaching. On the posters, Rulon is frozen in time, even as those days move further in the rearview. On this very trip, he was disappointed because he would have liked to go to the famed Carnegie Deli, whose main restaurant in Manhattan closed in after nearly 80 years.
But life moves on. Now, his dark gray, short-sleeve button-down shirt dangles over his belly and hangs out in front of him, unlike the singlets that cling to his body in both the poster and on the book cover.
But the shaved head and approachable demeanor remain. Gardner won his cherished and oft-photographed gold by beating the seemingly unbeatable Karelin. Attendees stand in line for a minute of his attention.
Gardner poses for photo after photo, always holding the bronze medal and letting his admirers hold the gold. He lifts women up off the ground with one arm, if they want him to, and most of them do. He lets the manager of one local insurance outlet put him in a headlock for their photo. The office sits in a strip of brick storefronts, and the front door opens to a wall of pristine, snowcapped mountains.
While Gardner has been working out of the office for a few months, he officially moved his stuff in last night. He bought a house nearby, so his only long commute is up I to the high school. He again cuts a hulking figure, now situated behind a desk in a Dri-FIT, long-sleeved black athletic shirt, gray slacks and black sneakers. On the desk he has nothing but a binder, a notebook and a red Powerade Zero Sugar.
Empty shelves line the wall to his right, but various items from his vast memorabilia collection fill the ones to his left. He has a torch from the Salt Lake City Olympics, which he got to carry right before his snowmobile accident. He has awards, trophies and plaques, plus T-shirts signed by fellow Olympians. The memories and Sharpie ink fade with time. Simmons can conjure. His family barn burned down when he was a kid. Before the Olympic Trials he was in a motorcycle accident and then dislocated his right wrist punching the bleachers after losing his cool during a pickup basketball game.
Three years later he walked away from a plane crash into Lake Powell with only a minor hip injury and a concussion. Gardner took the tests required to get his insurance license in The branch is independent, meaning they can sell policies through multiple insurance companies. A potential new client comes in for what Rulon calls a one-on-one. Rulon schmoozes, telling stories and jokes before Lydia steers things back toward business. Rulon raves about Lydia, who has years of experience working in the Utah Insurance Department, and he alternately calls her both the brains and the muscle of the operation.
He certainly has no problem using his name to draw people in. Perhaps most importantly, in this whole arrangement, is that the company is accommodating of his schedule. In a normal year, not interrupted by a pandemic, the high school wrestling season runs November to February. The state tournament is an all-day affair on both Wednesday and Thursday, and JRI has no issue with him logging those hours at the arena.
Consider those client recruitment days anyway, with Coach Rulon happily passing along his fliers to a steady stream of coaches, parents, tournament officials and others eager to chat him up between matches.
The arena at Utah Valley University is set up with eight wrestling mats in two rows of four. Gardner has a little car and a little traveling companion: Gus. Hundreds of wrestlers are running around, stretching or sparring to warm up. Gardner is standing along the center line between the rows of mats with an eye on his four guys, who are split into pairs to get loose.
One of his lightweights catches an elbow in the wrong spot and blood pours from his nose, seeping into his warm-up shirt and splattering on the crowded mat. Nobody bats an eye as the wrestler shoves gauze up his nostril and his practice partner sprays the mat down with disinfectant.
Officially, Rulon is coaching four kids at States. Practically speaking, he is coaching more than that. Rulon even gave him his phone number so they could text each other. In some ways, Gardner blends in amid the hundreds of wrestlers and dozens of coaches.
Everyone is focused, with the pressure of lifelong individual dreams, team titles and possibly college scholarships on the line. In other ways, Rulon has a presence. They clear the floor and the jumbotron hanging from the ceiling lists which bouts will begin on which mats. On-deck wrestlers stay on the floor in the warmup area as those with a longer wait time retreat to the bleachers. The media portrayed the gold-medal match as a coronation for Karelin as he headed into retirement.
Did I think I could beat him? Did I have a chance? 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. 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.
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