Rulon Gardner - Never Stop Pushing: My Life from a Wyoming Farm to the Olympic Medals Stand

THIS IS IT.

The end of an important chapter of my life, almost three decades that have, in large part, shaped me as a person.

As I lace up my wrestling shoes for the final time, to wrestle for the bronze medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, I run my hands along the shoes, feeling the soft leather.

I will be taking them off for the last time in less than fifteen minutes. And just two years ago, I thought Id never be putting wrestling shoes on my feet again. Suffering from severe frostbite after a night stranded in the Wyoming wilderness, soaking wet from five plunges into the Salt River and temperatures reaching 25 below zero, I had nearly lost the front third of both of my feet.

Yet here I am. Back on the world stage. Back where I had become the farm boy from Wyoming who had defeated the greatest wrestler of all time, by beating undefeated Russian Alexander Karelin for the gold medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

During the rehab for frostbite, just seeing my wrestling shoes in my truck or around the house had been painful; Id wonder every day when Id be able to put them on again. I think back now to the fall of 2002, months after my ordeal in the Wyoming wilderness when I could first put on the shoes again. The pain was so intense, my feet were so swollen, that I had to move up from my usual size 13 to size 14.

I ruined that pair, and several more, because my feet bled through the leather. Eventually, though, I was able to wear my wrestling shoes without too much pain. My feet still hurt during a tough practice, but I knew I was making progress. Soon, I didnt have to put on my straight face and pretend that my feet didnt feel like needles were poking them. If you cant put on the shoes, youre not a wrestler, I told myself during rehab sessions. Wrestling was my single biggest motivation to get through rehabilitation, my inspiration and number one reason to endure the surgeries, the physical therapy, and the wound-care treatments when the techs sandpapered the dead skin off my feet in order to stimulate growth in the red, raw tissue underneath. In fact, the first time I was without any pain putting on my wrestling shoes was more than a year after the accident in Wyoming, right before U.S. Nationals in the spring of 2003.

Earlier today in Athens, I lost my semifinal match to a wrestler I had beaten two years earlier. I wont get the chance to repeat as Olympic gold medalist. People think I must be devastated. The truth is, Fm not. I wanted the gold medal, no doubt about that. But I am thrilled to just be able to wrestle again.

Now I am putting my feet into my shoes for the last time as a wrestler. Not all of the feeling has come backand I am told it never will; in fact, another surgery awaits me a few months after the Olympicsbut nearly thirty years of wearing wrestling shoes makes me smile. So many memories have come on the mat. So many lessons have been learned through this sport, lessons I apply to real life. All of those experiences started with my wrestling shoes. Carrying my shoes in a gym bag. Wearing them, tied together, around my neck. Putting them on before practice. I can remember every pair of wrestling shoes I ever wore, including the first pair: Ed Bruce, my coach when I started out as an elementary school-age wrestler, let me wear a high-schoolers pair of wrestling shoes because my feet were so big. Coach Bruce gave me high-school hand-me-downs, since my family couldnt afford to buy new wrestling shoes every time I outgrew my current pair. Over the years, as I did get new shoes, it was always an exciting thing for me, because Im still just a kid at heart.

This will be the last time you put these on, I think to myself. It is an amazing, meaningful moment.

All I want from this match is all I want every single time I wrestle: my best effort. If I win, great; but if I lose, I can hold my head high, as long as I give it my best effort. In spite of what I have been throughnearly dying in the wilderness, suffering from severe frostbite, rehabilitating my feet into walking again, getting hit by a car while riding my motorcycle, and dislocating my wrist badly enough to require surgically implanted pinsI have a surprising peace about me. I am once again on the world stage, a far cry from the eastern Idaho hospital I was admitted to a short two years ago, but I feel right at home.

The truth is, while Im elated to be in Athens, I dont really care about the cameras and reporters at this point; just getting back home on the Olympic mat has been a victory. I even wondered, as I came back, if I was being greedy: after fulfilling my dream in 2000 with Olympic gold, and gold again at the 2001 World Championships, was I asking for too much? But then I remembered the original goal I had set in 1996, of making two Olympic teams; I am realizing that goal only now in Athens. Wrestling is the one thing that has healed my feetand my spirit: no matter what happens, wrestling completes my recovery.

I was a long shot to make it back to the Olympics before the accident, because I had to beat fellow American Dremiel Byers, the 2002 World Champion, just to make the U.S. Olympic Team.

So the bronze medal match, to me, is every bit as meaningful as the 2000 gold medal match in Sydney, where I beat the previously undefeated Russian legend, Alexander Karelin.

And when the final buzzer sounds, telling me Ive won the bronze medal in Athens, I know I have done my best. I havent won the gold medal, but in this match I have done my absolute best. And this time, my absolute best results in my second Olympic medal in four years.

This will be the last time my shoes come off as a wrestler. A tidal wave of emotion washes over me as I unlace them. It is a great privilege to be able to wrestle in the Olympics in Athens in 2004, and in Sydney at the 2000 Olympic Games; but then its a great privilege to wrestle in every match, whether on the world stage or in a tiny rural high-school gym in western Wyoming.