Dan Gable, wrestling legend and Olympic gold medalist (1972), reveals how the sport united rivals like Iran and Russia while exposing political brutality—like the likely execution of an Iranian protest wrestler. His undefeated high school/college career demanded brutal training: 282 lbs of heavy bags at 125 lbs, daily saunas (170–220°), and ice baths, though it cost him 22 surgeries, including six hip replacements after ignoring pain for years. Gable’s shift from raw American athleticism to disciplined Russian technique after a 1970 loss reshaped his dominance, but he criticizes doping scandals and the Olympics’ exploitation of athletes, who profit little while networks rake in millions. His early $13K salary barely covered costs until his father’s foresight provided $250K later, while endorsements like ASICS and a namesake beer sustained him. Wrestling’s relentless grind, he admits, nearly broke him—physically and emotionally—until stepping down in 1997 preserved his legacy, proving even the toughest must know when to quit. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, coming from a guy that has accomplished what you've accomplished and has become this legendary feature in the sport, it comes with the territory.
There's no way around it.
I mean, you're a beloved character in the sport of wrestling, to the point where I told people that you were going to be on my podcast and their eyebrows raise up.
Well, I'm glad you said that because every time I tell somebody, their eyebrows do the same when I'm going on this show.
And so, of course, I knew about this show, but I had to do a lot of homework just to see, wow, it's pretty big.
So I'm excited to be here because I know the effect it can have, not just on me because...
But on the sport, and I love the sport.
My hometown of Waterloo, that's why I got started in it because it was just dominating wrestling at the time.
And you know what's funny is that just from a world situation, Sport brings people together.
And, you know, it's like, who better than a sport with Russia or Iran or North Korea?
Because, you know, it's like, or Turkey, you know, they just, you know, especially the first two, you know, they just, we're always in conflict, it seems like, with them.
But when it comes to wrestling, we have something in common.
And, you We usually end up losing to both Russia and Iran, but sometimes we beat them too.
We are well known for good wrestling and that has helped, I think, the country be better off.
I had Jordan Burroughs on and he was describing to me what it's like to wrestle in Iran and how massive the sport is over there and he's a giant star over there and he's like and people are so friendly and so so inviting and so accepting and just so happy to see great wrestling and just wrestling is just an enormous sport over there and immensely popular Well,
when I won the Olympics in 1972, their most popular athlete was the guy in my weight class, the Iranian.
I'd been in the Worlds a year before, but before that he had two Olympic titles and every world title in between.
And all of a sudden he became so popular that the government was a little concerned about him, that the people were more appreciative of him than the government.
And so when he went to the Munich Olympics, even though he had lost the year before, Because I was there and I won the weight class.
We didn't get to wrestle, but he was there and representing Iran in 72. And he won his first match by about...
15 points, but he pulled out of the Olympics, and he ended up going to the United States because of his being so popular that he was scared they might do something to him at the government level.
I'm sure you're aware of what happened recently with the wrestler who was killed, the Iranian wrestler who was killed because he was involved in a peaceful protest, and they made an example out of him.
Wrestling, to me, is one of the most important sports because it's one of the very few sports that doesn't have a real...
I mean, there's obviously WWE wrestling and a lot of guys go from wrestling into MMA, but there's not a real professional venue.
I mean, Jordan Burroughs does some legit wrestling, actual amateur-style wrestling, and gets paid for matches and stuff now, and has sponsorships and the like.
And I'm very happy that he gets recognized and some other wrestlers get recognized, but it's not like basketball.
It's not like any other sport where you have Olympic champions go on boxing and become huge stars at a professional level.
With wrestling, it's...
It's one of the few sports where the people that participate in it, they take pride in the fact that they work in silence.
They take pride in the fact that they grind.
They take pride in the fact that they are miserable, that their training is unbelievably intense, and that it's so much more intense than most sports.
If you had to compare what an elite baseball player does, you're smiling, right?
No, but I appreciate all the sports because I have so many grandkids and a lot of their dads are even baseball players, football players, and even coaches at that level.
So, you know, it's pretty interesting because one of the baseball coaches for my local, where I live in Iowa City, he's got a son named Gable, actually, and he's first team All-State in baseball.
But when he was back in college, he was dating my daughter and he came to our wrestling practice.
And we were just doing a running practice that morning, early morning, and we were doing a little less than quarter-mile runs, and I'd give him a little time in between, of course, but he just wanted to try out what we were doing to see how it compared to how he trained that way.
They train different ways, but he made one really good lap, and he stayed right with the group, right in there.
I think he claims he might have made another one.
I don't know if it was the second or the third, but we were going to do eight.
And so I think by the second or the third, he was in a full squat and he couldn't.
I mean, his legs just went out on him and he couldn't do it.
And I tell you, I think it showed appreciation from him right away from that point of view.
I don't think there's any sport like it, in terms of the amount of effort that's required, and also the margin of fitness and of technique required for victory.
At the elite level, there's so many great wrestlers, both on the national level and the international level.
That it really requires this insane level of dedication to rise to the top.
Well you mentioned Jordan Burles and you know Jordan Burles was a good wrestler in high school and he was a good wrestler in college.
He became a great wrestler at the end of college but I shouldn't even say great because You have another level, and that's that world and Olympic level.
I don't think he really realized his talent and abilities.
A lot of it's just because it is a tough sport and that every practice is somewhat of a grind and everything that you do.
But if you stick with it long enough, the mind can develop as well.
When Jordan Burrell's mind...
Developed to where he felt he was a great wrestler, instead of just, he's a good wrestler, but this other guy is good and it's going to be a tough match.
But he stayed in it long enough, worked at it hard enough, where he was able to develop beyond the tools that you need for being on the mat, just technically or strategically.
So once he got that mind, that made the big difference.
And that's what carries him through right now.
And again, it's like right now, he's in a big battle to make the Olympic team, which is going to happen here shortly.
Because we eliminated some of the weight classes.
See, people don't understand in our sport.
Because they say, well, they don't do it in baseball, they don't do it in football, people weigh 100 pounds, people weigh 200 pounds, they're on the same team, and you're competing against them.
But in a wrestling match, a few pounds makes a difference when you're at that high level of excellence.
It's because of, like, physics.
You know, if you understand physics pretty well and positioning, then you can probably be a better wrestler just because of the amount of weight and skill that you have within your own positions.
And so, for me, it was like I could wrestle anybody.
I wrestled 150 pounds at the World's and Olympic Games.
And I could wrestle the heavyweight who weighed 450. And they go, why could you wrestle him?
I said, because I knew the leverage and I knew the skills and the strategy.
And because of that, it gave me the opportunity to feel heavier than him.
And I think that's what a lot of people said.
They say, you don't look that heavy, but when I wrestled you, you felt like so heavy.
I said, well, it's because I knew my positions.
So, you know, that's where like Jordan Burroughs is now.
He's so much better, but not just in his skills from on the mat.
It's a lot in his brains that he knows he's good.
He's had a lot of practices where he's done well.
I don't think I lost a practice.
From my junior year in college.
So I had my junior year, my senior year, then I had two and a half more years.
So that's four and a half years where I went to practice and never lost a wrestling practice.
And by that, I mean I pretty much dominated.
And I usually wrestled the bigger guys in the room, even though I was a lightweight.
It's because I could.
And because of that, it gave me a lot of confidence.
And so people always ask you, how do you think you're going to do?
Well, I think I'm going to win.
I don't really think.
I pretty much know I'm going to win.
It's one of these things that when you have that much success, it works.
That's where I feel Jordan Burroughs is developed to.
Like I said, he's got only six weight classes as compared to eight or nine or ten, what we normally used to have.
He's got a world champion coming down named Dake that will challenge him at his weight.
They're both Highly credentialed and so that's gonna be a big match coming up here probably pretty soon.
Mental toughness is one of the most important aspects of wrestling.
Obviously technique and fitness are huge but mental toughness is what defines wrestlers in my opinion because when you see successful wrestlers in the UFC in particular There's no one like them.
When they come over to MMA, you recognize there's something special about them as athletes.
And I think that it comes from the fact that wrestling is so difficult.
The practices are so hard.
But in the world of mental toughness, where mental toughness is one of the cornerstones of You're known as a guy that stands out.
You stand out amongst, like David Goggins likes to say, you're uncommon amongst uncommon men.
What is that?
What made you stand out from these other wrestlers?
Well, I'm going to jump forth to my high school coach, even though I got a lot before that.
But I just remember what he said in the room.
And he was like the best high school coach in the state at the time.
He said, guys, win with humility.
Lose with dignity, but damn it, don't lose!
And he put those last two lines together real quick, so you kind of had to listen to him.
But it was pretty neat because you win with humility, you lose with dignity, but damn it, don't lose.
And so, you know, that was my first major coach.
That really taught me a lot of those type of principles.
But before that, I was a kid that was at the YMCA when I was five, six years old.
And basically the reason why I was there because, you know, you want to learn how to swim because if you're an outdoors guy and you want to be around water and you want to You want to make sure you know how your kids swim, so my mom and dad got me into the YMCA, but what they got me into the YMCA really for was they needed help.
My dad was a full-time worker, and my mom, she stayed at home a lot, but she also helped my dad.
He had an office at home, but I was a little hellion.
And they needed me to learn how to swim, but they also needed me to learn how to be a little bit sociable.
They needed me to learn how to get along with kids.
My first job was at the YMCA. I actually competed.
My first sport competitively was, besides practicing, was swimming.
And I won a YMCA state championship when I was 12 years old, believe it or not, in the backstroke.
Which, you know, in wrestling, you know, I know in fighting you can go to your back and there's lots of tools that you can do there.
But I hate going to my back, you know.
And I think if I was a fighter, I would think I hate gravity coming down on me.
So I don't mind putting it down.
But, you know, and there's skills there you have to learn.
But I really liked the YMCA because it gave me...
A chance to learn something away from home.
I was home with my mom, I was home with my dad, home with my sister, four years older than me.
But, you know, it's just something...
I call it going for help.
And I think my mom and dad realized at that time...
That they needed some help with this kid.
And I think that's a really good thing to think about as people in the world when you have kids growing up.
And if you're not giving them what you need to give them, why not go for help?
And there's organizations out there.
Now, you've got to be careful who you're putting them into or even if you're giving them to a babysitter or whatever like that.
But If you're pretty confident that you have a good place to get some help, you get some help.
Same way with me as a coach.
Same way with me as a husband.
I mean, I got my wife.
I got my family.
I had my assistant coaches.
And I got my fans.
I mean, I always had them.
Looking out for me.
I built that kind of trust with them, or more than even trust, just they want to help.
And that was the way.
Now, you can't go overboard.
You still got to make sure that the help you're getting is the right help.
But the YMCA was perfect for me because, I mean, I can remember the first day they took us to a wrestling room.
We had a little wrestling room at the YMCA. I was already wrestling before that because my dad was a wrestler, not a great wrestler, but his friends were.
So when they came to the wrestling, learning the sport, my first wrestling room was at the YMCA there, even though I had been in a wrestling room because these older guys had drug me around into the wrestling rooms.
In Waterloo.
But I can remember wrestling a kid, and I handled him pretty good because I had already been wrestling on my carpet at home, wrestling outside in the grass, and these people had had a little experience with me.
But the kid kind of got mad, so I was waiting for my mom and dad to pick me up after the wise couple hours where you spend there.
And this kid came out, and he goes, you know, you can...
You know, maybe you beat me in wrestling up there.
But he goes, how about a street fight?
And I said, whoa.
You know, I was probably eight, nine, eight years old at the time.
And, you know, it was downtown Waterloo, Iowa.
Tough town.
I was on one side of the river and he was on the other side of the river growing up.
And so he probably had been in more fights than me, but I wasn't going to fight him.
I was waiting for my dad to pick me up, and all of a sudden, he punches me.
And so, you know, what do you do?
You've got to fight.
I mean, either that or run.
And I fought, and I did all right.
I mean, just like in the wrestling room, I did all right.
And so I had some of that in me, too.
But when I had the guy on the down, and I kind of let him up, We both looked over.
My dad was there standing watching me, and that guy's dad was standing there.
And my dad and his were talking to each other.
And so, you know, that's part of an experience that you kind of grow up in.
And I don't know if they even knew each other, but they were kind of supervising, yet we didn't know they were there.
And that was kind of one of my first experiences with understanding a little bit about competition outside organized sports, you know.
So, you know, actually, speaking of the story there, it was a really good one.
This is about my mom and dad.
My mom and dad were great people.
But they like to drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of cigarettes.
That's why they probably didn't live so long and they probably had some trouble at home.
And by that I mean the cops visited a home quite often just to break up fights or my mom would probably call the cops on my dad.
The first time I ever really took notice was when they came the first time and they took my dad away.
He had been rough with my mom, so I probably understood.
But I saw him kind of throw a handcuff on him.
I think they just threw one on and kind of took him out the door.
I didn't really see from there.
He came home that night later on.
They brought him back later.
So the next day I went to school and the policeman that had come and picked him up was actually a neighbor down the street.
Just lived about a block from us.
And I was really bad, you know, at the police taking my dad away, even though probably it was a good thing.
But I didn't really understand what was going on at that time.
And this is different today.
It probably wouldn't go on.
But the neighbor policeman about a block away had a son in my class at school.
So after school that day, We were both walking home, and I was really mad.
And I pulled out of my pocket a wire, and I took this kid down on the ground, and I wired his wrist together.
And not real hard but like there were handcuffs and I grabbed the wire and I said this is what your dad did to my dad last night and I'm gonna do it to you and I'm gonna take you and I'm gonna take you home this way and I took him home because they lived about a block away and I untook the things off and let him go in but it's like probably fourth grade but My dad found out about that,
and wow, did I get in trouble.
I mean, he used to hit me on top of the head with a ring, probably why I don't have much hair.
And he looked at me and he said, you know what?
I was intoxicated last night.
It was good they took me out of here.
But you know what they did to me when they got me down to the police department?
He said I played pool with them.
They had a little billiards room down there and they played pool with me until I sobered up and then they brought me back.
And you did that to his son?
I said, Dad, I was just protecting you, I thought.
And everybody understood.
But it's kind of funny how things are.
And that's the old days, good old days, compared to...
They'd probably do a lot more.
They'd lock you up, probably.
They don't give you too many breaks.
But it's kind of funny how that's the kind of house...
The difference between 40 years ago 50 years ago, 60 years ago, I forget.
I mean, I got picked up one other time, and it was my former...
I was back home from college, and he was my gym teacher in eighth grade, Mr. Blue, and he...
He ended up being a policeman.
So when I came home to college, so that was about in seventh grade, so we're talking six, seven, eight years later, when I was home for the weekend and I was driving and he picked me up and I probably had a beer in the car or something.
You know, he actually let me go.
But he picked me up again the same night.
So he took me down a second time.
And he put me in his office in the police station.
We talked for quite a while.
But he let me go, too.
But you know, you just can't get away with that.
I mean, there's just more rules, regulations.
If people find out, it's like, whoa, whoa.
You know, I think the good old days probably gave you a chance to actually realize things better than you can today.
You can actually get a second chance, maybe, and, you know, that type of thing.
So today is not the best day to ask me about the good old days, just because today is, I would say, definitely the good old days, because these days are...
We're divided.
That's the way it is.
And so it's not as much fun.
You're almost scared to talk.
I came here in an airplane and out of the airplane magazine, I picked up something because I thought it was interesting.
It'll probably help me.
Because I don't want to get in trouble, you know?
I don't want to get in trouble.
And it said, curious about using...
This article was in the...
It said, curious about using gender-neutral language in your everyday life.
One of my former wrestlers who was a school teacher right at the campus at the University of Iowa, and he's pretty strong in his beliefs because he grew up in a family that didn't have a dad, and the government took pretty good care of him also.
He just sent me a note.
I told him that story, and he told me that, well, here's how you can talk, and he told me how I can talk.
But then when he got done, he says, And then go tell that guy to fuck off.
I think the reason why that guy gave you hell for something as simple as saying he and she, that highlights what's wrong here.
What people are doing with not just gender-neutral language, but with the whole woke movement, politically correct movement...
Is they have an opportunity to yell at people and tell people what to do.
It gives assholes and low-status individuals power over other people by enforcing this ideology.
And it doesn't make any sense.
Like, you can say she and he, it doesn't make you a bad person.
And if, by the way, if you change genders and you say she and he and it switches back and forth, that's fine too.
That's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is the intent behind what you said was entirely innocent.
And the reason why that guy gave you shit about it is because he's got an opportunity to force you to comply with what he thinks are new rules.
So he thinks he can force them on you and he has a position to have the moral high ground and he has a position to make you feel bad or to make you listen to him.
That guy can eat shit because people like him are the real problem with this fucking country.
It's not that people aren't kind.
It's not that people aren't friendly.
Most people are kind, and most people are friendly.
The problem is, whenever this new thing, a new movement comes along, and this one is particularly divisive, because there's so many dipshits that have adopted it, and people that are low-status, unsuccessful, non-disciplined individuals, and they want to force it on other people, and it becomes a big part of their life, is enforcing this kind of language And this kind of ideology on other people.
To somehow get those people that you're talking about to see the light.
I really would.
I would like.
And that's kind of a goal of mine, to see the light like that.
But I do have my setbacks.
The other day, I was having breakfast with my family on a birthday breakfast for one of my grandkids.
And we had a big table, you know, full of...
We have 23 of us, but one family wasn't there.
This one here, the one that's with me today, Danny Olste, he wasn't with me, so he has five of them.
So we had 18, and we just had a breakfast, and we had a birthday party at a restaurant, and so I'm going to go pay the bill, and the bill was, you know...
It's not bad.
It was $135, but that's $135 for breakfast for a nice little restaurant.
And so I went up there, and you have to wear your mask until you get in and sit down and eat.
And so then I just got up from eating, and I had my mask in my hand.
And I was looking down at the cash register, and the girl that was there said to me, she goes...
And I didn't even look at her.
She goes...
I was looking down, reading the bill, and she said, put that mask on.
And I'm looking down, and I'm not looking up.
I'm not looking up, but I lost my cool.
And I put my mask on.
Because I had it right there.
And I was going to put it on anyway, but I just hadn't put it on yet.
So I put it on, and I said...
You really pissed me off.
And she just didn't know what to say.
She didn't say a word.
It wasn't her place.
She was just working there and stuff like that.
Pretty young gal.
And then she gave me the bill and she didn't say anything and I didn't say anything.
And I gave him the right tip because it was a different lady.
So then I finally looked up and I said, I never forget.
That's what I said to her.
And the funny thing is, I didn't mean to do harm to her, but...
So, you know, when I was 15, I'd won a state championship.
And...
My first state championship in wrestling.
First year as a high school sophomore, because that high school started then.
Anyway, long story short, this neighbor kid ended up murdering my sister.
And he had walked to school with me a couple weeks before that and said something to me who I, if I would have communicated, It might have saved her life, you know, just because she probably would have never let the guy into her house.
He just said, like, boy, you got a hot sister, you know, and he was kind of my age, one year older than me, but my sister was four years older than me, so he was probably 16 and she was 19, and she had a boyfriend, and she was living at home yet, and so...
So, the funny thing is, I actually was going to come home and say something to her, but when I got home, I got distracted, and I said, oh, it's just boy talk, you know, it's just boy talk.
It was mostly about, he just thought my sister was really hot and that he would like to do something with her, you know, but he never really said it outright.
I just figured something, you know, the boys would like to do, you know, but...
Anyway, two weeks later, we're on a fishing trip with my mom and dad, and my sister's supposed to join us, and she doesn't show up because she worked for my dad.
She went to college for a year, and then she worked for my dad after that as a secretary in the real estate business.
She didn't show up, so we called the neighbor.
Back in those days, she didn't have cell phones, so we had a phone call.
That was outside a cabin that we rented.
I can date you because the cabin we rented for four bucks a night.
It's just unheard of.
That would have been 1964. We were at a payphone about a half a block from the cabin that we were renting.
We rolled the window down and you put the dime or nickel in the phone.
My dad called the I was in the back seat.
My mom and dad were in the front.
My dad was driving.
He called the neighbor and asked if my sister's car was still in the driveway.
He said yes.
She was supposed to be with us 90 miles away that morning.
She didn't show up.
So my dad and my mom get really nervous, and they tell them to go break into that house.
If you can't get in, break into it, or if she hasn't answered the door, get into that house and call us back.
So you can see the tension in the front seat of the car.
I can see my mom and dad worrying.
The phone rings finally about 15 minutes later, and all of a sudden, my dad drops the phone.
My mom was starting to go hysterical to know what was wrong.
He looked over, and I'll never forget this, being a 15-year-old kid.
My dad said to her, Diane's not alive.
And oh my God.
You know, it's just my mom opened the door of the car.
She took off running back to the block to the cabin.
I got out and ran after her.
And when I followed her into the cabin by that time, she was already on the floor.
And she had grabbed her hair and she was pulling her head, hitting the wooden floor.
And she looked up and she had blood all over her forehead.
And So my dad then followed in, and we packed up real quick.
In about 10 minutes, we left half the stuff there, and we took off from my hometown, 90 miles away.
But within a half hour of that phone call, I was in the back seat, and there was a lot of trauma going on in that front seat.
And I said to my dad, Dad, I may know something about this.
I don't know for sure, but I may.
And he overreacted.
He slammed the car, the brakes on the car, got out of the car, came around, opened the door, pulled me out, slammed me against the door.
What do you mean?
You may know something about it.
And then I told him the story about the two weeks before that me walking to school with a neighbor kid and what he had said.
And he just hugged me and threw me back in the car.
And we stopped at the next town, which is about 15 miles later, and went into the police station.
And we told the police what had happened as far as my sister and daughter getting murdered the night before, and we were on our way there, but my kid told me a story that I think if you could help me, As soon as possible.
So they called ahead to the Waterloo Police Department.
The Waterloo Police located, he was at work sacking groceries the next day in a grocery store.
And he'd actually admitted right there that he did it, you know, after they got him.
But the thing is, what's amazing is...
This guy, then he escaped from prison after about 20...
He was only 16. He got life in penitentiary.
And he escaped, and that pretty much doomed him to ever getting out.
And then, because he was out for a month before they caught him, and he actually, in the trial, he was so mad about getting sentenced to life in prison that he pointed to the Gable family on the way out, and he said he was going to kill us all.
So anyway, this guy goes to prison and he lives and he dies in prison after he broke out.
He never really got a chance to ever let him out.
But here's the thing.
So it's just about, I don't know, say it's seven, eight years ago when he passed away.
But we got another cabin now.
It's about 30 miles north of the cabin that we were in that time.
And that was a rental cabin that's torn down now.
And we go right by that place.
So we're going right by that place.
Actually, me and my wife had been at our cabin that my mom and dad owned, and I inherited it when they passed on.
But we were at that cabin, and we were coming home, and we were going right by the spot where that payphone was and where we had learned about her death.
And there's a cell phone call.
It's the warden.
Of the prison he's in.
I think it was Indiana.
He was in Indiana, the prison.
And the warden told me that The guy that murdered your sister just died.
The exact same spot where I learned of the murder, I was driving by, and it's about 115 miles from, well, actually a lot further than that.
So it's like spooky.
It's like real spooky.
And then what's really amazing is what he said to me, the warden.
He said, before he died, He was seeing a counselor, and the counselor told me this, that he said, you know, he repented.
He said, I really shouldn't have.
I feel bad about killing Diane Gable.
I mean, this is years later, but that he had told, and he had been rehabbed somewhat, and he goes, and the reason why, he said, I knew I was going to kill somebody, but he said, because she was such a nice girl.
But, you know, as bad as my dad felt, my mom felt, and, you know, I felt probably, I kind of got rid of a lot of hatred when he told me that he admitted that she was such a nice girl and that he shouldn't have done it.
And it was probably not too flory.
He probably did it on his deathbed or something, but he probably had all this guilt.
But it helped me too.
It helped me because even though I cried for an hour and I think the stuff you build up inside you sometimes, you don't know what it's going to take to get it out of you.
And I think that really helped me with my situation because you always feel a little guilty because maybe you could have saved her life.
But more than that, it's been something that I based my whole life on too.
Just communication.
I mean, this is your business, communication.
I mean, sometimes my wife tells me I'm telling her too much.
You know, you don't need to tell me.
You know, we don't need to talk about this.
I said, yeah, I do.
I do.
You know, I need to talk about it.
It's not just that.
It's just anything that crops up.
I need to go home and I need to have a conversation with somebody that I like and love.
And to be able to see whether I'm doing the right thing or I'm not doing the right thing or I'm getting feelings.
It's like right now talking to you.
I love the conversation and I love what you're saying.
Even though I may not feel exactly the same way you do, I love it that you're saying it because you're saying it the way I want to say it.
And I probably do behind my back.
I probably don't stand public, but I'm probably trying to help some people too and heal some people or even maybe get them to change or not feel like...
Because I've been through so many kids and...
I've just seen some of the things that you've done with these kids and how you've made big differences.
Just like Rico Ciparelli, which you're talking about.
Just like a kid named Brad Penrith, who had a twin, and he was not going to make it in life very far.
By changing him, like, for example, Brad was, he needed to stop drinking, you know, for good.
You know, he couldn't drink.
I mean, like, right now, I can drink a beer.
I'm not going to go crazy.
But if he drank a beer or two, he'd go crazy.
I'd get in trouble every time.
Every time he had a...
Got in trouble.
It was alcohol-related.
And I didn't even know it.
What's funny about this kid, Brad Penrith, he won a national championship for me as a sophomore, and he got in trouble within a week or two after he won the national championship.
And it was the first time he ever made the paper.
They picked him up for intoxication.
Well, you know what?
Once they looked him up, He'd already been arrested quite a few times the year before, and they never even put his name in the paper.
But once he became a famous guy, he made the headlines.
And so I didn't even know.
If I'd have known he'd been getting in trouble, I'd probably been working on him before.
But it's one of these things that...
It's like who you are.
It's who you are sometimes.
But he did well.
He ended up being a three-time All-American.
He got in the national finals three times.
And he won.
He got beat both times, the other ones.
But, you know, it was controversial.
There's calls.
Could have went his way.
And he went to become a world silver medalist in the world championships.
But you know what he had to do?
He had to He's one of these guys that he can't drink.
So he gave it up.
And he hasn't had a drink ever since.
And he's in his 50s now.
And he's doing really well.
Good wife.
Good kids.
Here I am.
I have a beer.
And we're probably going to drink a beer here sometime.
Yeah, and Brad was right with Rico, you know, and Roy Selger, that's another name that's crazy, and these guys were hellions, but they could kick butt on the wrestling mat, but they liked to go downtown, and that's when those days, that was the hard days on me, because I had to go downtown and kick them out of the bars.
Well, they actually warned the bar people that owned the bars that I would be coming in at 12, so they would be hiding out the back, so let us know and we'll run out the back door.
Those days, they should have probably happened.
I shouldn't have let it go that far.
But when you're winning seven, eight, nine straight national titles, sometimes you give a kid a break or two and it comes back to haunt you.
It became kind of a ritual for me to go leave home about 11.30 every night to go downtown to Iowa City to walk into bars to see where some of the guys were and try to get them home.
And You know, that was probably not the right way to go about things.
I should have had them to where I didn't have to do that.
But, you know, you just, you have, you're winning the Big Tens every year, you're winning the Nassos every year.
Sometimes you just, you lose control.
And, uh, It's kind of like how I lost my last match in college, and that's another whole story.
But you win a lot, and sometimes you think you can cut corners.
Not freestyle wrestling, because I didn't start wrestling freestyle until in college, but that's the international style.
And I did lose there.
But for Scholastic Wrestling, high school was undefeated, and then I was undefeated in college until my last match.
But, you know, my coaches, and here I was going to become a coach.
I didn't really know it for sure, but I didn't know anything else, you know, because I was always a team captain, team leader, and all these kind of things.
So I'm going into the national championship, and it's like, wow.
I'm the show.
I mean, I couldn't look at a newspaper because I was on the front page of the Tribune and sports pages.
It was in Evanston, Illinois.
And every place I'd go, people would come up to me and all this kind of stuff.
So from a coaching point of view, if my coaches had to do it over again, and they actually apologized to me years later, but it was like nobody thought I was going to lose.
Except for one guy.
One guy actually said I can beat him.
But he didn't tell me.
He forgot to tell me.
So I didn't take him for granted.
I took him for granted.
And so I always went through routines, warming up, getting ready mentally.
We weighed in five hours before a match.
From then on, you ate and drank a little bit.
And then focus, focus, rest, focus, focus.
I was doing interviews with Wide World Sport.
Right during the national finals.
And I wasn't the talker.
Like, I could talk pretty good now.
Because I learned to talk.
But at that time, off the mat, I couldn't talk to anybody.
And so when they put a mic in front of me and they wanted to know about, hey, just say this.
Say, hey, I'm Dan Gable.
Come watch me next week on Wide World of Sport as I finish my career 182-0.
And I hadn't wrestled the match yet.
And so I was supposed to say that.
But you think I could say that?
Hell no, I couldn't say that.
I kept stuttering, not saying it, and they kept doing it.
So finally, after about 15 takes, they wrote it out on big cards.
And so I took about seven takes with that one.
I think I got it done in about 22 takes.
But then when I got it done, it wasn't good either.
They just finally said, oh, that's good enough.
Get out of here.
So I turned.
I'm on deck.
I'm on deck.
So they already went through the 118, 126, 134, and I was 142 at that time.
So 134 is just wrestling.
And I always warmed up for a good 45 minutes to an hour.
So I hit a quick warm-up and went out in that match.
And I didn't realize there was somebody that actually thought they could beat me.
Even though before, I always did the routine.
I went through it.
But I'll tell you what.
You skip once, you're vulnerable.
For the only time in my life that within a minute into the match, I could hear the crowd.
A minute into the match, I could feel how I felt.
And I was feeling tired and weak.
I mean, I never knew how you felt in a wrestling match until the match was over.
And once it was over, Yeah, sometimes I felt good, but sometimes I felt weak and tired.
But I didn't show it because I didn't think about it.
I didn't know it.
But the one time he didn't prepare, and the guy thinking that he could go with you, And you could.
You take on everything.
So you take on way more than just your opponent.
And so I talked myself into wrestling after minute one.
Well, even today, as you get older, you notice how if you don't warm up and you hit something really hard, you get exhausted.
It's probably kind of like that...
Usually, what I did for warm-ups is probably within a half hour of my match, I would get match heartbeat rate up and go for three or four minutes that way so you don't get real tired.
But then after that, you'd probably have a little...
Pretty much, you know, stretching and jogging and then actually wrestling.
Actually wrestling pretty hard.
And to where you would actually sweating good.
And then I actually got to the point where if I had a lot of time before my match, I would actually go take another shower.
But usually when you're the fourth guy out or something, you just kind of stayed loose.
But you didn't really.
And then right before your match again, you might get your heart rate up again.
Because your heart rate didn't really go down below 100 probably.
And in a wrestling match, it's probably going up to 170, 180, stuff like that.
But you wanted to have your heart rate up to that match pace heart rate for not 7 or 8 minutes because you're not going to recover quick enough.
You'd still be tired.
You'd want to be tired.
So you'd get it up there and spike it up and down for 2 or 3 minutes and hitting some really good execution of wrestling holds.
We do hand fighting, a lot of hand fighting.
And that hand fighting can really get that heart rate up and pushing and shoving and hitting some live techniques where the guy was letting you do it, but you're doing it at live pace.
And you do some sprints and do some tumbling, gymnastics tumbling.
That loss took me to unbelievable heights that I would have never had without that loss.
What's unbelievable is if you ask the guy that beat me, Larry Owings, He said, if I had to do it over again, I might have lost that match on purpose.
Or not even on purpose, just because I didn't know how to handle it.
I wanted to be an Olympic champion.
I wanted to be a world champion.
But when I won that match, there was so much hype.
I didn't know how to handle it.
He said, even broke up my marriage.
He was married, I guess.
That's what he claimed.
He claims.
And he probably came home and just didn't know how to...
You know, you're not supposed to be...
It's kind of like with me when going downtown that night.
You know, I probably shouldn't have been...
But my wife is behind us and everything, but I probably shouldn't have stayed there.
Sometimes I didn't tell you this.
Sometimes I stayed at the bar for a little while and then came home.
But, you know, I probably shouldn't have stayed at the bar.
And there's a lot of times when I was on my way home that after coming home at 6.30 or 7 o'clock at night, then I had kids at home and a wife, and they had dinner, and they probably got tired of waiting for me, that they did get tired of waiting for me.
They would...
Go have dinner.
And the time I'd get home, I'd probably have to walk in the bedroom, kiss the kids goodnight, because they were already in bed.
And that was a tough time in my life, too, because the next year we end up losing the 10th championship, going for the all-time record again.
Going for the all-time record once, you'd think a guy learned, because then you got 10 years later, you kind of forget, and you do the same damn thing.
But you do it not as an athlete, you do it as a coach.
And I think about ending my marriage because my wife, I think, was pretty upset with me.
And then I got upset with my wife about things.
And so we struggled pretty hard.
And you'd think you'd learn, but sometimes you forget.
That's what almost everybody always says about moments, real low moments in their life, when they thought everything was untouchable, and they thought that they were just...
And pretty much dedicated my life to that moment as far as how I was going to make her proud.
You know, that type of stuff.
It's pretty amazing that Those low light, those low points can bring you out and get you back on track, even though it's hard to say that there was good in it.
But, you know, another thing that I really was scared of in my life, that when My mom and dad wouldn't make it together.
And it started at a pretty young age.
And it went all through high school.
Because even after my sister was murdered as a 10th grader, it didn't let up in my household.
A lot of late night drinking and yelling.
And before that 10th grade, it was just mad at each other about something.
But then after that, a lot of it was about that murder.
And they'd blame each other and stuff like that.
We did move back into the same house because they never found the murder weapon.
It was a knife.
It could have been one of our knives.
And there was a lot of blood all over our house.
And...
They didn't want to move back in, but I convinced them that we should move back in.
One of the ways I convinced them was about a month after the murder, when we did move back in, so it was probably the second month, they were up arguing, and I was in bed, and I heard my mom say something that I thought was really stupid.
She said, I wish I would have raised her a whore because she didn't give in.
She could have gave in.
She would still be alive when I heard that.
I got up and I came out.
And our home really hadn't become a home again.
It had been a house.
We moved back in it, but it hadn't gone.
Her bedroom was like just there.
It was just there and the door was always closed.
And so I looked at him and I said, you know what?
I'm tired of this fighting.
And I just heard the conversation that was going on.
I am moving out of my bedroom.
I'm moving it right now.
I'm going into her room and her room is going to become my room and I'm staying there starting right now.
So I went in, opened the door, went in, closed the door, went to bed, got underneath her covers, went to bed.
That room probably hadn't been, nobody had been in that room for 30 days, probably 45 days.
About 10 minutes later, I heard the door.
They thought I was sleeping.
They looked inside and saw me sleeping in there, but I wasn't sleeping.
I don't think I slept that night at all.
But that is the turnaround for the Gable family in that house.
We stayed in that house.
And I never thought they would stay married, and so that was one of the reasons why, besides my sister, I just give them something to really focus on and concentrate.
So when you went away, they could go to all these events.
Hell, my dad, when I won the World Championship, it's the only time he didn't go to my event that was a major event, my mom and dad, because it was in communist Bulgaria, Bulgaria.
And when I won the World Championship, he was down at the Waterloo Courier paper with the editor down there, and it was an odd hour, and he was waiting for the teletype or the machine to come over and see how I did in that event.
It wasn't that easy to find out.
So all of a sudden, it comes over.
It's typed.
And it was a headline across the paper.
It said, Dan Gable wins world championship.
My old man ripped that paper right off that teletype machine and he ran outside and it was early morning and there were people coming to work and he was running down the street swinging that little newspaper yelling, hey, my kid's a world champion!
My kid's a world champion.
That kind of stuff is just...
You can't make that kind of stuff up.
It's just amazing that...
But anyway, so what happened is I found out once I went to college that my mom and dad really liked each other.
I never knew that.
Because now they only had each other.
And I wasn't there.
But they could follow me.
And they followed me for every...
And they wrote me every day.
So I'd get mail every day.
I'd go to the mailbox and I'd have a letter from my mom every day.
Seven days a week when I was gone.
Only 90 miles.
And in those letters, We used to drink a lot of high C. And when you take the labels off, you could send seven or eight of them in and they'd give you money back.
So my mom would send me in.
She'd have a little letter and she'd say, here's some money from the high C and how you doing or something like that.
And there would always be a quarter, a nickel, a dime, you know, that type of stuff in there.
So it's pretty amazing.
And she did that three or four times a week.
I would get change in the mail.
But, you know, not a whole lot.
I was getting a full-ride scholarship.
That day, you got $25 a month for whatever you wanted to spend it on from the school.
And then my dad gave me an extra $20 a month.
And that was all he was costing him, $20.
Well, he did more than that because he bought me a car, a nice little car, to send me off to college and, you know, that type of stuff.
But, you know, it's pretty amazing that, you know, what...
When you find out stuff that they really like you, but yet they still need some common person to follow.
And I was that guy.
When I was in high school, I... I was a state champ as a sophomore, which is the first year of high school.
Then I won state champion as a junior, but I was wrestling.
My weight was 95 as a sophomore and 103 as a junior.
In college, the first weights were 118, and my dad thought I should be getting bigger.
Plus, I was pretty skinny.
And so my dad says, you know, I want to get you a job this summer going into your senior year because the job you're going to get, you're going to want it because, you know, you like working out hard and stuff like this, but this job's going to be a workout all day long.
It's going to be with a cement crew.
He says, you're going to be hauling bags, 94-pound bags of Portland Bank of cement.
You're going to be digging and shoveling cement.
You're going to be digging holes.
You're going to be doing all this hard work, carrying buckets of mud, and by then they called it cement, and so on and so forth.
You're going to swing in a sledgehammer because you're going to be dealing with a lot of basements because my dad was dealing with the house business.
And so he got me a job.
When I was 16 years old, I was still 16 yet in the summer of my junior year.
It was one of those, you know, where you had to be 18. And I was 16, but my dad was a house builder and he'd always hired this guy to build the basements.
And he told the guy he wanted me to get a job and the guy says, well, I can't really put him on the books.
So he says, I'll keep him off the books.
We'll hire him anyway.
But he says, you know, we'll just pay him under the cash under the table.
But my dad says, you don't even have to pay him.
I'll pay you.
So after about three days of work, because my dad had scared the daylights out of me, telling me how hard I'd have to work.
I didn't realize there was people that were just putting their hours in, some of them.
And I was working arms and legs around these guys, carrying, running.
And the people kind of looked at me funny for a while, but then they realized I was on a mission.
Finally, the owner of the cement company, Martinson Construction, Jerry Martinson was his name, called my dad after three days and said, Mr. Gable, you're not going to pay your son.
We're going to pay your son.
We'll just do it under the table as well.
We're going to pay him.
We're not going to let you pay him.
You're not going to have to pay him.
He's working everybody under the table.
He's getting along with everybody.
In fact, at lunches, before we eat lunch, he always wants to wrestle everybody on the crew.
And the first day, these guys, they're old-timers, but they're big guys.
He's wrestling 103, so he's probably up to 125 right now.
And he's 125 pounds, and these 250-pound guys, they can't beat him.
He said he's kicking the shit out of every one of them.
And they love him.
And they're having a great time with him.
In fact, they're giving him all the hard work.
In fact, when he moves those 94-pound bags of cement off the truck to where they're supposed to go...
That's not enough for him.
So they tell him to move those bags again to the other side of the house.
So it's just crazy, and they're all loving it.
So, you know, we're going to pay your son.
We're going to pay your son.
So, you know, my dad was looking out for me.
They looked out for my dad.
That's the good old days.
The police were looking out for my dad.
I don't know if we're looking out for many people today.
They might have got a bronze medal or they might have got one round of placing or something.
But they survived the cut and went a long way.
And they felt pretty good to me.
And I said...
It's not gold.
So somebody heard that, and they liked it, so they come up with a Gable Gold Nutrition drink, and it's up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin.
There's a former wrestler, again, Brian Slater, who, and one of my former wrestlers, Barry Davis, works up there, used to be the former Wisconsin coach and was a three-time national champion for me.
Olympic silver medalist, Olympic bronze, Olympic silver medalist as well.
He works up there and they made a nutrition drink in the last year.
It's called Gable Gold.
So I got a Gable beer.
It's a Munich-style Helles.
That's where I won the Munichs.
And if you read it on there, what's it say?
It says, Gable.
One word can say so much.
In our city, few words, if any, resonate with the name Gable.
I can't even read it.
I've got to get my glasses here a little bit better.
He says, but in commemoration of his Olympic triumph in Munich, 1972, we've crafted a beer much more appropriate, approachable, Then adversaries found Dan to be on the mat.
He says, it's crisp and cold.
We can't think of a more fitting tribute.
So Dave Morgan got this beer.
People love it.
They want to get it outside Iowa, but it only is in Iowa.
Because I found out you can't sell it outside without going through a lot of...
And I usually just say two beers, but these are 12 ounces, so I could have two and a half of these.
But that was back in a few years ago.
I'm getting older.
I don't know if I can still do that limit.
Because if I look at the times that I've been in trouble with something at all, it's always been a little beer, had a little beer in me, whether it be with the police or whether it be with my wife or whatever.
So finally, when I was 48, I jumped out of bed one morning.
And when I jumped out of bed, I collapsed.
And I felt something crunch.
Couldn't get up.
It was my last year of coaching, actually.
And I didn't know it was going to be my last year of coaching.
But So I went to the doctor and the doctor, Dr. Marsh, a great doctor, orthopedic surgeon, actually he was a surgeon, actually he was a, when you get in an accident, I can't remember the term, not a crisis, but a certain doctor where you bring him in when there's a big accident.
And they brought me into his place.
And he looked at it and he says, wow.
You got a bad hip.
Really bad.
And you just fractured it.
It just splintered.
It splintered.
When you jumped out of bed this morning.
It has been so fragile.
It just splintered.
And I had been kind of working through the pain for 10 years.
So I had to get it fixed during that season.
And so when I got it fixed, Immediately it felt good.
Immediately.
But then I didn't realize my other one was hurting.
Because that one had the most pain.
So it was overtaking the other one, even though the other one was bad.
So he says, we've got to do that other one.
I said, wow.
So it took a while.
It took four, five, six months to heal, to get back going.
So then they had to wait a little while, and then they did the other one.
So I, you know, it was...
Made me think a lot.
And you know, I don't think that's what got me out of wrestling.
I think what got me out of wrestling is what I kind of referred to earlier.
The mind.
By that I meant that there was a certain way of life that you have lived.
And if it didn't happen, Like, second place was just not acceptable.
And so, you know, to me, it was like, I gotta get that other, I gotta get my life back.
You know, and I went back to my mom, now that I'm thinking.
Because my mom is what got me out of the sport as a wrestler.
Because she saw me coming home from, I was in Iowa City and I came home and I went to the high school for a workout and when I walked in the house just to have dinner because I was visiting Waterloo, Iowa, I walked in and I sprained my ankle in practice over there.
At West High, my high school.
And so I was limping.
And my mom looked at me and she said, my God, you're limping?
He said, you know what?
You've got to get out of this.
You've got to get on with your life.
And I was already on with my life a little bit.
But I was still contemplating whether I should wrestle again.
Yeah, I was the only guy, you know, high school, back in the high school days, when I first came there as a sophomore, I lived across the street from the high school.
My coach knew that I was a little bit of a fanatic, and so he says, Dan, I live five miles away from West High School, and I'd like to have the doors open in the locker room for the team if they want to come early, even during football or even during wrestling especially.
He says, I'm going to give you a key to the locker room.
To where you can just come right in from the outside.
Because you can come right across this.
Because I know you want to come, right?
He goes, I go, yeah, I want to come in the mornings.
He says, not a required practice.
And I'll get there, but I'll probably not come right towards the end.
Because it's just on your own, running, lifting, that type stuff.
And he says, I'm going to give you a key to this.
And this, again, good old days.
You can't do it now.
But...
And if you do, you get fired.
So he gave me a key to school.
I walked across the street.
I only had to walk a block.
And I'd open up the gym door, go in there, and anybody that wanted to come with me.
Well, nobody came with me at first because wrestling season was just starting, just off of football.
And some of them took a break.
And even the wrestlers that didn't wrestle or didn't play football, they weren't about to go in the mornings yet because wrestling practice at 3.30 was a bear.
We had our team break.
A bear of a wrestling practice.
unidentified
I'm going to take a drink of this beer, even though I'm probably going to work out yet today.
I didn't think it was worth it, but you haven't lost a match.
I think I'm going to join you.
I said, good.
So then it was all of a sudden 3, 4, 5, 6. So by the middle season, the end of the season, we had just about everybody coming in the mornings.
Not the day of the match or the day before, but like three days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, usually, when you could not get ready for the big matches.
But that's the way people are.
You know, it shouldn't take that way, but from a coaching point of view, it taught me a lesson.
You know, you always have to have a leader in there because you've got to go for help again.
Here my goal for help is.
So I have somebody in there besides myself.
And that's kind of the way we built the University of Iowa up.
We went for help right away because they weren't that good.
Iowa State was good, but I thought Iowa was going to be automatically good.
Because they were good.
But they didn't know they were good.
And they never had done good.
And so they weren't good in their mind.
And that's what got me out of wrestling.
My mind.
So the mind is such a big thing.
My mind was really hurting more than my body.
And I didn't really realize it.
And that's where my mom, I think, understood it.
And my wife and people like that, they could see that I was kind of going crazy.
So we go to the Big Tens, we go to the Nassos, and all of a sudden we're winning the day before the finals and we win the championship the day before.
Or we don't.
But whenever we won the championship...
That night when I went to bed on Saturday night, or even a Friday night if we won the championship and we still had a bunch of guys in the finals, I would wake up the next day healthy.
So I've been sick for two weeks, and I can wake up healthy as soon as we want.
But anyway, you know, I'm one of these coaches that a little bit, I give a little bit, but I always, the first people I looked at After a match, when the kid won or lost, I looked at, I knew where their parents were, if they were there, and I'd look at them, and the look on their face when their kid won a big match, or was just a win, as compared to when they looked on when they lost.
Oh my gosh.
And it went right back to my mom and dad, too.
Just how it kind of appeared to me.
But I coached more from a motivational point of view, from the parents' point of view, than I did the kid.
Because I knew the kid was going to be a parent someday.
He's going to be the same thing, so what the heck.
How much of a factor was that though for you as a competitor?
Have you ever thought, obviously you would have much preferred your sister to be alive, Have you ever thought about how much different you were because of that anger and because of that guilt?
For people that don't understand, maybe people that don't follow wrestling, I just want to let them know, in a world of extreme athletes, like the world of wrestling, you were very unusual.
You stood out.
You were one of the few people ever in the history of the Olympics to not have a single point scored upon you.
I mean, that's just phenomenal when you're dealing with world-class wrestlers from all these different countries that are also training the same way you are, just knowing the Olympics is the pinnacle of the sport.
And for you to go there and not just win, but not get a single point scored on you is just extraordinary.
If I felt a certain way about this guy, maybe I was just happy he showed up.
To me, it's like once you got there at practice, it's what you did during the time of practice, not whether you were here on time or left early or all that kind of stuff.
What you got accomplished.
And if you got accomplished an unbelievable a lot that I felt good about, well, And again, it's bad to say that, that you have different standards.
This blows people's minds here about part of being a coach.
So I had these Bannock brothers who were really good.
Some of my first early recruits.
They were twins.
And all of a sudden...
One of them, just you could tell he couldn't take a two-hour practice.
And by that I mean, not physically, but he got bored.
He was bored at a practice.
And almost to the point where he was getting nothing.
It was going backwards once...
He only could do a certain style of practice.
He could most like, if you play pickup basketball, throw the basketball out there, play pickup, just go, go, go.
No time period, no referees, no nothing.
So if he come to practice, if you roll the basketball out there, roll the headgear out there, roll the mouthpiece, put it in, and say, Russell, he could go.
He'd go, and he'd go.
But if you stopped and had instruction...
And if you stopped and had verbal talk, and if you stopped and had other things, he just couldn't get that.
So how does a coach figure out how to get the most out of this guy without hurting the team?
Because that's kind of like, in wrestling, it's a bear at practice.
And how do you let one guy do something different than the rest?
Well, if you're smart, you get 29 other guys to agree that this is what should be done.
So me, I'm the 30th guy.
I had coaches I talked to.
I had a coach named Jay Robinson who was from Oklahoma State.
He was on our team.
He had a lot of different philosophies.
We talked about him.
We decided to do this.
Let's talk to the team without Lou there and make sure that they understand where we're thinking.
They understand how we think, and then we'll see what the response is.
Can we maybe hold him back a little bit from a standpoint of not maybe letting him come to all the practice?
Because every practice is...
Most of them are broke down into certain things.
Hard wrestling, conditioning, talk, fire up, stuff you have to work on.
And he wasn't good on that listening.
He wasn't good on the drilling.
He was good on live wrestling.
Let's wrestle!
So that was about the last hour.
So I talked to the team.
I talked to the coaches and I talked to the team.
And the team listened to what we said.
We're not trying to cut corners here, guys.
We want to be better as a team.
Do you think this wrestler, Lou, would benefit more by not coming to the first part of practice?
Because you know him better than I do because you're his friends more than I am even.
I said, do you think he could just come for that second hour and that he would be good or if not better?
They voted 29-0 that he should only come for the second hour of practice because that first hour was a waste of time for him.
And noticed when he had to come for the first hour, his second hour wasn't as good.
We had noticed that.
And so they voted, easy decision.
Two-time national champ, third-place finisher, Olympic champ, 1984. The team made a good decision.
I'll tell you what, I wasn't going to be as good as I turned out to be because unless it went the way it did.
I spent four years as an assistant.
Two years at Iowa State as a grad assistant and didn't really do anything but train there for the Worlds and Olympics.
But then once I got to the University of Iowa, The head coach was Gary Kurdlemeyer.
And it was his first year as a head coach.
He'd been the assistant.
But he hired me as the assistant.
But he had been a head coach before in high school.
And he had been running Iowa's program, even though he wasn't the head coach.
It was the old-timer, Dave McCuskey, who was there, and he was kind of just settling out his years.
And so Gary had actually acted as the head coach.
So he had a lot of clout, he had a lot of knowledge, and he'd been a head coach.
And so he brought me in, and he taught me unbelievable stuff.
But here's what's unbelievable about what he taught me right away, in that we started practices.
And he let me run a couple practices.
So he'd run a couple, then I'd run a couple, then he'd run a couple, then I'd run a couple.
Two weeks after we'd been in the season and started, he calls me because we had the same office.
And he comes over and he sat down and he goes, you know, Gable, I've been watching you at practice.
You're better in practice than I am with the kids.
You're going to run all the practices.
You're going to do all the training of the athletes.
You're going to do the conversation.
You're going to do what you want to do to prepare them because you're better than I am.
First year ever as a head coach in college.
And he gave me within two weeks, and I just got there back from the Olympics, and he gave me full-time coaching in the wrestling room.
But guess what?
And then he goes, but you know what?
I've already noticed outside the practice room, not quite as good as you are in the practice room.
You've got to learn to talk a little more.
I'm going to send you to the clubs in town, the little places that people meet for lunch.
I'm going to send you to all the fraternities and all the sororities and all the dorms.
We're going to have speeches.
You're going to give speeches to all those kids on campus.
And then he says, I'm going to teach you how to recruit.
You're going to go with me when we go recruit.
I'm going to teach you all these different things.
I'm going to teach you how to fundraise.
I'm going to teach you how to talk outside the wrestling room.
All these things that are important.
And he says, you know, I'm probably not going to coach too long.
I kind of want to move up in administration.
So if things go well here for the next three or four years, I'll probably move up and you can move in if things go well.
Well, exactly four years.
And we went from a team that was top 20, maybe 15 to 20. We went to probably maybe 7th or 8th the first year.
Then we went to 4th or 5th.
Then we won the Big 10s.
You know, for the first time in a long time.
Third year, we won the Nationals, too.
Then the fourth year, we won the Nationals.
Then he got out.
He turned it over to me.
So, you know, he stayed true to his form.
But he was unbelievable.
Here's the story.
I'm at Iowa State.
I'm training for the Olympics.
And it's December.
Olympics are going to be in the summer.
And I'm defending world champion, and I'm predicted, you know, I'm one of the top seven favored to win the gold medal in the Olympics for America.
And he knows he's moving up to be a head coach, and he put his eyesight on me.
So, he had this guy that lived in Iowa City, but he had been away from Iowa City and working out in New York, and he had been working with my Olympic coach, my Olympic coach that I was going to have, because the Olympic coach had a company that was a wrestling company,
mats and products and shoes and all this kind of stuff and he said he happens to be an Iowa City guy but he's out there in New York working and I'm working with him a little bit about you getting a job over in Ames, Iowa and
So he went to work for Dr. Harold Nichols' business, who was the head coach of Ames, who was my coach, and he went to work there because he had a good reputation and he did a good job on that type of business.
But University of Iowa, Gary Kirtlemyer, sent him over as a spy.
To follow me.
Not just to see how good I was, but mostly to see how they could land me over at the University of Iowa as his assistant.
He was over there the whole time.
There's all these things that were going on.
They were telling me, he'd come over and he'd talk to me.
And I said, I really didn't want to make a decision now because I want to win the Olympics and all this kind of stuff.
I don't want to be bothered by coaching right now.
So they said, fine, take your time.
So all of a sudden, he's getting reports, though, because this guy comes in and watches practice and so on and so forth.
And I don't know this, though.
And nobody knows it at Ames.
So it's kind of interesting.
So they get me to...
He's got a report back home.
So all of a sudden, he calls me.
He says, you know, what do you think?
I said, well, you said I didn't have to know until after the Olympics.
And he goes, well, just give me an inkling.
I said, I really don't know.
And so he says, okay.
I want to call you back, though, but, you know, go ahead, just whatever you're doing.
He waited like three days to call me back and told me to take it or leave it.
And I had no idea.
I hadn't even thought about it.
Well, little did I know, and he was getting reports every day about me, and so I was getting good reports.
But little did I know that this guy was also, and the guy was the head coach, was working with my mom and dad.
I thought I was being an idiot, not taking it, because everybody told me to take it.
So I took it, and then Coach Nichols found out about it, and he got upset, and he came up, because I was visiting home that weekend in Waterloo, Iowa, and so he said, had you signed anything?
I said, no.
He said, well, if you haven't signed anything, just turn it down.
Well, I had already committed verbally, so I took it.
But what I didn't realize is, and I said, I'll be back.
I'll be back next year.
There's no way I'm going to stay over there.
But what I forgot, and I didn't understand, it's just like me with my teams, that I was kind of the leaders on the teams, really liked the kids on the teams, and I had an effect on them.
They had an effect on me.
They helped me out.
They helped me drink beer, maybe.
But, you know, it was one of these things that, That once you realize something and you don't really know what to do, you just kind of go for help again.
And when I went for help, I told them, because I was getting ready for the Olympics, I told them, okay, I'll take it.
But yet I didn't really think.
So anyway, so I go to the first day of practice at Iowa, and I actually liked it.
I mean, I liked the kids.
I liked them.
And that's what you don't really realize.
You don't really realize how you're going to fit in until you get there.
And I said, after like three or four practices, I said, you guys are great.
You guys are good.
You're as good as...
I've been around state championship high school teams.
I've been around college teams.
I've been around...
In the summer, I go to these Olympic training camps.
I understand that, but don't you think part of what being a coach is, is inspiring the athletes?
And there's no one that's gonna be more inspirational to an athlete than someone who is literally one of the greatest of all time at the sport.
There's a thing about athletes when they're in the presence of greatness.
It inspires them to raise their own level.
When you're in the presence of someone who has done what you aspire to do and they're one of those people that's achieved what you aspire to achieve and they're one of the legends of the sport.
That alone is very valuable.
It's incredibly valuable because for athletes, they live and die in their own mind.
You know, there's physical ability, which is a huge component, but a lot of guys have physical ability.
There's a lot of good genetics when you get to a top team or a top, when you get to, whether it's mixed martial arts fighters or boxers or whatever, there's a lot of really good athletes.
But when someone can be inspirational, when someone is like, you know, if you're getting coached, if you're a boxer and getting coached by Marvin Hagler, that means something.
You know, there's more to it than just the technical aspects of them showing you how to succeed.
There's something about having a guy like you as a coach that's insanely valuable to an athlete.
I mean, you can't put a value on it because it's inspirational.
He's running practice with me, but he's the head, but he's being my assistant in the room.
And we're only there for a couple, we've only been there for a week or two.
And a security guy comes into practice.
And when he comes into practice, he called me over, or he called Gerdelmeyer over, and then they called me over and they talked to us.
And he said that there's been a gas leak in a pipe in the building.
And we are going around telling everybody this, that's here working out, that they have the right to know this and that they can leave or should leave if they want to.
And I said, well, I look at Gary and I said, we better get the heck out of here because we don't want to get blown up or anything, you know.
Gas leak.
He said, I said, is it really dangerous?
He goes, no danger.
We've already fixed the problem.
It was just a leak.
We had a valve.
We shut it off.
It's okay, but they're making us do this.
So you got your choice, stay or go.
And I looked at Kurt and I said, We're not going.
We're not going.
We're staying.
But you still got to tell your athletes.
They can go if they want.
I said, no, they won't leave.
Kurtelmeier looked at me like funny because he'd been around.
He'd known the guys.
But we had recruited eight new athletes.
But they were recruited with me as the assistant and me in the conversation.
So we went and pulled the team apart and said, guys, here's the situation.
Now, we've been only two or three weeks into practice.
Gas leak, we don't have the right to keep you here if you want to leave.
No danger.
Security guy, no danger, right?
No danger, coaches.
But we can tell you that if they want to leave, they can leave.
I said, okay.
Okay, guys, nobody's going to leave, right?
The only eight athletes left were the freshmen that we had recruited.
The other 24 got up, walked, and I yelled, guys, where are you going?
See, that's what I was dealing with that I didn't understand as a coach.
Never in my life had I been around non-championship teams, whether it be high school or college or the Olympic type states.
So this was new to me.
And Kurt Meyer looked at me like it was a teaching moment for me.
It was a teaching moment.
And it was kind of like those guys that didn't show up until I proved that I won.
So once we started winning a little bit more, once some of these freshmen started making varsity and all that kind of stuff, these guys, they would have stayed.
Some of them.
Not all of them.
And, you know, it's a process.
And the Kirtelmeyer goes to me, the coach, he says, you know, Gable, we're on a, like I said, we're on a four-year plan to win the Nationals.
And I looked at him and I said, we'll win it this year.
And he said...
I think you better, you know, that's a great goal, but it's going to take a while.
So the first year we had one champ, and we hadn't had a champ for a while.
There's one team, the Henzo Gracie team out of New York City, that is, they dominate, in particular, the guys that are coached by this guy named John Donaher.
And they were in town this past weekend for a jujitsu match.
There's a guy named Gordon Ryan.
He's the pound for pound greatest of all time.
He has a hard time finding matches.
Not only does he submit people, but he tells...
Let me show you something.
He was competing against this guy named Wagner Rocha.
Wagner Hocha.
And Wagner is a top-level jiu-jitsu guy.
He's a little smaller than Gordon, but he's still a top-level guy.
He's an elite Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt.
And Gordon is competing against him and puts in an envelope.
How he's going to beat him.
And he gives it to the commentators before the match.
And he says, open this after the match.
And then he puts a triangle.
And he says, who's next?
And he taps him with a triangle in the match.
I was there.
It was amazing.
He just completely dominated him, brutalized him, waited for his time, and then tapped him with a triangle.
Afterwards, I take John Donaher and Craig Jones and Lex Friedman.
You know Lex.
We all go out to dinner.
And we talk.
And I said to John Donaher, we're talking about how they train and what they do.
And he was telling me about athletes that come and train with them, and they go through one brutal training session, and he says, "I'll see you tomorrow." And he goes, "You guys train like this two days in a row?" And he goes, "Yeah, two days in a row." And he goes, "So, some of them come the next day, and some of them don't.
And the ones that come the next day, he goes, "Okay, I'll see you tomorrow." And he goes, "You guys train like this three days in a row?" And he goes, we train like this seven days in a row.
I go, you train seven days in a row?
And he goes, seven days in a row.
I go, you don't believe in rest days?
And he goes, no.
He goes, if you're really tired, train light.
You'll have an active recovery.
This team is dominating jujitsu.
When I say dominating, I mean, it's an understatement.
Guys are living in Puerto Rico right now to train with these guys.
Because they left New York City, Dan.
Because New York City has these draconian lockdown laws that are similar to Los Angeles where they shut down all the jujitsu gyms.
They shut down everything.
They shut down restaurants, comedy clubs.
So people are trying to scramble and figure out how to survive.
So these guys out of the Donaher Death Squad at a Henzo Gracie school, they moved to Puerto Rico.
They moved to a fucking island in the middle of the ocean so that they could train jiu-jitsu and compete.
And people are flying and moving to Puerto Rico to train with them.
But when they get there and they find out it's seven days a week.
There's no rest days.
The rest day is you train lighter.
Like if you just go there and just don't try as hard if you need a day off.
But we'll see you tomorrow.
And these guys are dominating.
And there's a thing about that that you see in wrestling that just...
A lot of people don't want to accept the workload.
They don't want to accept the workload that's required to be elite.
Yeah, obviously I work extremely hard, or I have and do and will, and I won't let up on that.
But I also know how to adjust a little bit.
Now, when science didn't tell me and I just went with what science was and now it's different, well, I'm sorry because I messed up, but I went with the rules at that time.
But if there's something that changes that's better, I'll go with that.
And so to me, it's like I'm...
I know if I'm really sore, I know I can warm up long enough where I will not be sore.
It might take an extra hour.
So if I'm unbelievably sore, I'm going to warm up for an extra hour.
I do it every day, and lately I haven't been able to do it for about a week because the place I'm at in Florida right now, they're putting a new one in, so it's kind of being constructed.
I learned it from a guy that I trained with from my hometown named Bob Buzzard, who was about six or seven years older than me, who was a great wrestler at Iowa State.
He was on the Olympic team, too.
He was a local kid.
But, you know, at that time, he probably, you know, he showed me, he took me into one of them and showed me how, I think we probably used it for losing weight then, but But over time, eventually, we learned how to use it for recovery.
Because once you're done with practice and you go to heat right away if you want to, you don't have to do anything.
You're just sweating.
You don't have to do anything.
And it actually takes out the lactic acid in your muscles from a hard workout and makes you recover quicker.
But you don't just combine that with heat alone.
Now you've got to go to cold.
So you go to cold shower.
And then probably go back into another heat again.
And you go back into cold.
And I'm telling you...
After we get done practicing Olympic training, a lot of times I would come back, I'd be the last guy to leave practice, and I'd get there after everybody had been done eating and everything, and I'd go eat, and I'd be about an hour after I'd been done eating, and I'd say, guys, I feel pretty good.
I'm going to go out for a hard run.
Anybody want to go with me?
Okay, well, we're exhausted.
And even the guys that won the gold medals with me and stuff like that, they just couldn't figure out how I could recover so quick.
But none of them were there sitting with me that hour of recovery in the hot, in the cold, back in the hot, back in the cold, getting a massage.
They might have been getting a massage, but they probably skipped some of that stuff.
The suffering.
Actually, the suffering was probably whoever's getting beat up on the mat.
But then it seems to me like if you have that temperature right and that humidity right, it's just unbelievable relaxing.
And there's proof.
There's proof in the pudding right now that you can look it up.
I may have overdone it at times when I didn't know better, or that was my philosophy.
Sometimes you've got to overdo things, but you really don't want to do something that's going to hurt you.
So, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have that same attitude.
But I'd be more educated, and I would do things differently.
In fact, I coached differently at the end of my career as I did at the beginning of my career.
Some of these days that I took these kids up on Carver Hawkeye Arena, and it's about a quarter mile along the top of the arena, and it's concrete, and I ran the hell out of them, and I ran the stairs, 44 steps, concrete, and then I did it again the next day.
I wouldn't do it the next day anymore.
If I worked you really hard in something, I would give you more recovery time to make sure that in the long run, you're going to be healthier.
I wouldn't cut the learning time.
I wouldn't cut down the actual effort when I do it.
But I would give you the more science to make sure you can last, longevity.
But you only go with what you know.
And you know what you know right now if you stay educated.
Things change a lot.
I'd be a lot healthier now with my knees if the doctors didn't take all the cartilage out of my knees because one year they said there was no function in cartilage.
And I said, but what's the recovery time?
Well, if we take the cartilage out, it won't be very long.
You can take about six weeks.
But if we tie it back down, this was in 1973. They took the cartilage out of your knees?
I mean, at the beginning, you know, I just a tough guy, you know, just throw the ball out there and turn me loose.
In fact, in college, that's kind of how we trained.
We had enough good athletes so we could just wrestle each other.
We didn't have to have structure and all that kind of stuff.
And I'll tell you, once you started watching, once you got a little bit and watched the practice from the Russians and the coaches, you realized they were technicals crazy.
And so what I did was all these foreign countries that worked out, I went to the practices and watched them.
They thought I was a person that was like a keeper there.
They didn't know that there's a little guy spying on you.
I kind of learned that from a guy spying on me, from hiring me at Iowa later on, I guess, too.
So I would follow this guy.
I'd follow the teams around and watch them.
And they were really, really technically oriented, strategically oriented.
They didn't do as much conditioning as we did and that type of stuff.
So they were very, very much science.
Very much a lot of science.
And I don't think I really...
Again, I lost to Owings.
That really helped me become more of a guy that...
Pay attention to details.
Pay attention to details.
Coaching details.
Don't get caught up on this.
And I also kind of said, maybe I've got to get better too.
Maybe I've got to get better.
So when I went to these world championships that summer...
In Canada, I really followed a lot of the top wrestlers.
Sometimes I followed them right after matches, right into their locker rooms or right back where their team was staying.
They just thought I was the guy that was there.
They didn't really know that I was doing spying.
I was just surprised how things were different a lot than how I was myself trained.
I knew that when I lost that match to Owings, I didn't know how to finish a match, even though I didn't know how to start it on that one because I wasn't ready.
But I knew that I didn't know how to strategically finish a match.
Well, I was ahead, and I could have just kind of maybe stalled it out, but I didn't know how to stall.
So there's actually an art installing.
Even though you don't like the word.
When I was in the finals of the Worlds and the Olympics, I could have probably scored more.
But you're taking a risk.
Because the only way you're going to lose...
They had rules.
You could actually lose...
You could get beat, but you could actually lose and win and stuff like that.
It's not so much that way now, but back when I wrestled, there were.
I needed to not put myself in any danger at the end of a match to make sure I would win.
So it's kind of like, okay, how do you tie a guy up where he can't move?
You don't necessarily have to shoot underneath him.
You don't have to do holds on him.
You don't have to risk for scoring, but you've got to tie him up.
It's kind of like you learn defense.
I didn't really have much of a defense until I got beat by Owings, and then I realized that I've got to learn how to finish, and I've got to have a better defense and how to score from a defense.
Because I was just offensive-minded.
And I learned by watching these Russians that they have really good defenses.
And so that really shuts their area down for scoring on them.
And especially during the end of the match.
Because if you're going to end and you're going to win a match pretty easily, but if you take risk, you could lose.
The last minute or two of the match in my world final match, it was in Bulgaria.
It was outside in a soccer stadium.
There was 12,000 Bulgarians rooting for the Bulgarian, and I just tied him up for about a minute to win the match easily.
I was ahead 8-3, and so I didn't take any risk, and I won solid.
So in the Olympic finals, the only way he could beat me, actually, he could take me down and still beat me, but the only way he could beat me is he had to pin me to beat me.
And so when I'm up in the last minute or two, I just kind of tied him up and stayed with him and didn't worry about too much for me scoring.
So there's strategy that I didn't really know at the beginning.
And the technique part, too.
So, you know, in wrestling, you can shoot.
You know, you didn't know how to do moves from one side.
But this is what's crazy about wrestling.
You could have ten moves.
But if you did the same moves from the other side of the body, you got 20 moves.
So you definitely need to know how to score from both sides of the body.
And you could be better at one side.
But if you only are one-sided, what happens if a guy comes out and he's all a one-sided wrestler, just the side that you're not good at?
You're in trouble.
So wrestlers, you know, we have to be aware of that.
And you have to, like I shoot a high crotch really good to one side.
I have a high crotch the other side, not quite as good.
But I have a single leg the other side that's really good.
You know, that type of thing.
Or I have a fireman carry to this side.
And I have a two-on-one foot sweep to this side.
So I got a balance of how I wrestle.
Because you just don't know what you're coming up against.
And you never know where you're going to be in a flurry to be able to score.
It's a really interesting documentary by this guy named Brian Fogle and it's all about...
What happened was it was a very fortunate documentary in that he was making a documentary about one thing and it became about a different thing.
He was making a documentary about a bike race.
He was doing a bicycle race.
And he was going to do it clean one year, and then he was going to get doped up on performance-enhancing drugs and do it the second year and see what the difference is.
And he hired Gregory Rychenkov, who was the head of Russian anti-doping at the time.
And he was explaining to him what he was going to have to take and how to take it, this and that.
Along the way, while they were doing this.
So he filmed the first race, and then in the year leading up to the second race, the Sochi Olympic scandal happened.
And Gregory Uchenkov was, he was a part of that.
Where he explained he had to leave the country.
He escaped and came to America because he was being implicated in this whole scandal where they were taking the urine from the athletes.
They were opening up the supposedly...
There was some container that couldn't be opened, but the Russians had figured out how to open it.
They would take out the dirty urine and replace it with clean urine.
So they doped up their entire team.
And Gregory was explaining how they doped up the entire team.
Everyone except the figure skaters.
They found that the figure skaters, when they doped up the fine motor skills, there was no benefit and the females became too manly.
But it's a fascinating documentary where it shows you the lengths that some countries will go to cheat.
But it's about exactly that, and how a guy comes home, a small little town in the United States, and I'm not sure if it's on the Pacific Coast, somewhere like maybe Washington, I think it was, where he came home, and the town hadn't seen him for years because his mom died, so he'd come back to sell her house.
And when he comes back to sell her house, Believe it or not, the wrestling coach dies, and they want him to stay and to be the coach.
So he actually stays and be the coach, and it gets into conflicts, and all of a sudden, he comes through with this conflict and makes it right.
But it's really a good movie, and it's about exactly that.
Because in our sport...
Or any sport.
And there's this book out, and I couldn't believe it.
I don't know what the name of the book was, but it said overseas in these places, because it takes you out of poverty, it takes you out of being nothing to somebody.
They say that, like, give me whatever.
And the statistics were, like, unbelievable that how many people would say they would take a pill that would win them the right to win a gold medal in the Olympics.
But yet, a year, within a year after you won those gold medals, you died.
And they had a statistical thing on it, and it was like, most people still take the damn pill!
Like I said, my dad had to pay 500 bucks for me to wrestle in the Olympics.
But you know, I'm the kind of guy, again, a little bit different between me and you.
You're pretty hardcore on this stuff.
But for me, it's like...
I look over time how I can do well.
And so, you know, it's like I've been hired with ASICS for how many years?
I said 1978, so 22 and 21, 43 years.
And I've been having shoes with them for 35 years and still selling shoes.
I just signed another four-year contract with them.
And I'm hoping to go another four years after that.
And so...
But at the beginning, I didn't get anything.
And I signed my coaching job.
It was $13,000 a year.
What's funny about that is That wasn't going to make it for me because I got married.
I don't handle any money.
I don't like to get caught in that mental.
That drives me crazy.
I've got enough issues.
So my wife's saying, well, I don't know if we can pay these bills on this new house that we're living in.
And so I remember my dad, when I went to the YMCA, I remember I got a job down there.
And my dad said, I'm going to start you some kind of a plan when you get your first job.
And I was 10 years old.
And so I went to my dad when I was 29. I said, Dad, we're hurting for money a little bit, but didn't you tell me that you started me some kind of a plan in my life when I was young?
He goes, yeah, I did.
I go, is there any money in that plan, Dad?
I'm 29. Actually, I'm 28. 27 or 28. First year head coach.
Bought a new house.
I'm married.
Probably got maybe one kid.
And I said, He said, I'll call you back.
So he calls me back in about 15 minutes.
He said, yeah, I just pulled out the latest, what they send me.
He said, I should have this sent to you anyway.
No, I'm because, you know, I just never turn.
It's in your name and I just get it to me.
Because when you made it up, you were 10 years old.
All they did was start taking money out of your payment checks on the YMCA. Then you went to work for me.
And then you went to work for Martinson Construction.
Then you went to work for Wheeler Lumber Company.
And all those years, then you went to work for the University of Iowa.
Or Iowa State as a graduate assistant, then you went to work for the University of Iowa.
And so I said, well, is there any money in it?
And so it's been, it was about 19 years of accumulating what they could take out of that to put in a retirement plan.
And this is 1977. That's a long time ago.
And so the figure he gave me was a lot of money to me.
So, you know, it's just like, it's just like right now, you know, it's, over all these years, I've been working for ASICs for, you know, I got a beer, we're drinking beer called Gable.
It drives me nuts because I think it's a wild scam that the athletes aren't compensated and insane amounts of money are being generated by them competing.
It's not just that the athletes don't deserve the endorsements.
They do deserve the endorsements and more.
They deserve the endorsements if they win.
They deserve the endorsements if they become someone like Dan Gable.
But the problem is the networks are making all the fucking money while these people are giving their life to compete.
And the networks are treating it like a professional sport where they don't have to pay the athletes.
That's what it is.
It's not just a regular professional sport either.
It's the biggest professional sport because it's international.
It's a gigantic world event every two years Every two years, where they have the Olympic Games, it's a gigantic world event, and the people that make the most money, the people that broadcast it on television, not the actual athletes.
You're not broadcasting, you're not producing anything.
The athletes are producing the entertainment.
The entire...
The reason why people are tuning in is to see exceptional athletes perform.
They know they've dedicated their life to this.
They know that there's years and years and years of toil and sweat and grind.
And here they are, and you're going to put a camera on it.
And because you put a camera on it, you're making all the money?
The same way they do with the NBA. The same way they do with the NFL. There should be money distributed to those athletes.
And I guarantee you we'll have better athletes.
Because you know in other countries they compensate their athletes.
You know, they compensate their athletes in Russia.
They compensate their athletes in China.
Not as well as they should, but they do.
In a lot of these countries, when you're talking about high-level athletes, they pay them to train, and they take care of all their expenses, and they make sure that they're properly prepared because they're representing their country.
In our country, they rely on great corporations like ASICS or whatever the corporation is that can compensate these athletes after they're done competing.
And I think we both are actually on the same page.
I think the difference is, for me, it's like I've kind of had these opportunities Over time, it's not like great opportunities, but I just take this one, and I take this one, and I take this one.
And instead of really getting compensated up front by what you're talking about, I'm able to, because I've stayed...
In front of the public.
And it's hard to do that sometimes.
I mean, it's hard to go from an Olympic athlete to automatically being a great coach or being a...
The amount of money those teams, those colleges earn, those universities earn because of the fact their sports teams are successful, their programs are successful.
It's just crazy to me.
It's just one of those legacy institutions that's been around for so long that we just accepted the fact the athletes get ripped off.
Even though you get an Olympic gold medal, I mean, you're pretty young usually.
I mean, an athlete's not going to win an Olympic gold medal unless you got a different kind of the ancient Olympics or something, you know, the old timers.
No, I don't have any notes, but I've been thinking about you for a long time, my friend.
I really have.
I've been looking forward to this day, and it meant a lot to me that you came here.
And I appreciate you as a human being, and I appreciate you as an athlete, and as a representative of what I believe is one of the greatest sports ever.