Persistence, hard work, and willingness to do "whatever it takes" won him the gold and the envy of all in his sport.
Rulon Gardner was always the fat kid, the one the other children just loved to taunt and tease. Awkward, simple, and self-conscious. He wasn't the greatest student, either. Most people who knew him figured the youngest of the nine Gardner children wouldn't go much further in life than the family dairy farm in rural Wyoming. "I was a slow reader," he says. "I had to push myself past what anybody said I could do." But he kept on.	Olympian Rulon Gardner
The youngest of nine children, he grew up lifting bales of hay and hauling 5-gallon buckets of milk. "We always tried to pass our chores on to one another," says his brother Russell. "And since Rulon was the youngest he got more than his share." Perhaps from these experiences, Rulon learned that persistence was his strength. For, without much encouragement from those around him, he went on to acquire a teaching degree in Physical Education from the University of Nebraska on a wrestling scholarship--overcoming his own learning disability. He started to get into Greco-Roman wrestling after his college wrestling career ended. Rulon put the work ethic he learned on the family farm into action again on the mat. He became the first American to win the Granma Cup tournament in Cuba—which he has now done three times—and it was then that he made a decision: "Whatever it takes," he remembers telling himself, "I'll do it." This last summer Rulon entered the Olympics for the first time in the superheavyweight class of Greco-Roman wrestling. He was a complete underdog. And the fact that he made it to the final match was extraordinary in itself. But there in his way stood Aleksandr Karelin. Karelin is the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler in Olympic history, an unimaginable combination of size (6-foot-3, 283 pounds) and strength without parallel in this sport of behemoths. A three-time defending Olympic gold medalist, Karelin had not lost in 13 years, and had not been scored upon since 1993. In his first and only previous meeting with the man who reputedly trains by hauling logs through the Siberian winter, Rulon lost 5-0: Rulon recalls that, "he threw me on my head three times." Throughout his career, Karelin's opponents have made choices to lose quickly and get pinned, rather than waste energy in a futile effort. This sport, or at least Karelin, require competitors to take punishment and keep on coming and that's exactly what Rulon Gardner did. At two different junctures of the 9-minute match, Karelin worked his massive arms beneath Gardner and attempted his signature move, the reverse body lift. Previous opponents have likened the sensation to that of a rat being strangled by a boa constrictor. "I said, 'OK, he's got to be feeling his legs, and his lungs are going to be burnt a little bit,'" a thrilled Gardner told reporters. "He still felt incredibly strong at the end. It was getting easier to move him, and I could just tell that he didn't have that fire." "(But) I still had to push. I couldn't relax one second of that 9-minute period. He's so strong and so big ... I honestly didn't think I could (beat him)." But it was a planned attack and Rulon knew that Karelin could be tired down ever so slightly. Enough for him to find a weak link. He exhausted his opponent and managed to score one point on him in overtime, claiming victory and the gold medal. In an interview after his victory, Rulon said he would spend the night celebrating with his family. We Profile Rulon as Sentinel/Realist/Kinsmen. Persistence, pragmatism, and family. Rulon Gardner, the man who defeated a living legend--but more importantly, his own fears.

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