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

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

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

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

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

Growing Up Tough

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miracle on the Mat

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

Twice during the match, after Rulon started from the "down" position, the Russian succeeded in setting up the dreaded Karelin lift. Wrapping his arms around Rulon's waist and cinching his hands tightly together, Karelin stood up, hoisting him off the mat. Each time, the crowd erupted, expecting that Rulon was about to be heaved over on his back for a five-point throw, or maybe a pin. But Rulon, suspended above the mat, made tiny adjustments with his body weight to keep Karelin off-balance. The Russian wasn't able to finish either throw, and the deadlocked match was sent into overtime.

Successful wrestlers become very familiar with the terrifying condition known as "oxygen debt"--a state in which a grappler ignores his depleted muscles, overtaxed lungs, straining heart and surging panic, continuing to fight out of sheer willpower. With overtime looming, Karelin was "feeling his legs, and his lungs [were] burnt a bit," Rulon later recalled. Nevertheless, "he still felt incredibly strong" as the grapplers met at the center of the mat to begin the overtime period. Rulon's strategy had been to wear down Karelin, something no opponent had been able to do. But as he tied up with the Russian, Gardner knew that he, too, was rapidly reaching the limits of endurance.

Gardner and Karelin clinched each other in a modified "Cumberland grip"--one arm over an opponent's shoulder, the other thrust underneath the opposite arm, hands grasped behind the back. Under a new rule instituted for the 2000 games, a wrestler who broke the grip first would be penalized a point.

For more than two agonizing minutes the clinched behemoths pummeled each other. Many of Karelin's opponents described his grip as akin to that of an anaconda. But Rulon, thanks to superb cardiovascular conditioning, kept up a steady assault, threshing with his shoulders and jockeying for superior position. "It was getting easier to move him, and I could just tell that he didn't have that fire," Rulon later said. "[But] I still had to push. I couldn't relax one second.... I honestly didn't think I could beat him."

At last Karelin's grip failed him--and for the first time in more than a decade, the formidable Russian found himself on the short end of the score.

With the seconds evaporating, Karelin launched a renewed assault, repeatedly attacking Rulon's head and trying to tic up an arm. With less than five seconds left, the world was treated to an astonishing spectacle: Karelin, after crouching in exhausted frustration, turned to the referee and said, "I'm done"--and walked unsteadily off the mat, leaving Rulon the victor. As a tumultuous ovation poured down from the stunned crowd, Rulon performed a celebratory cartwheel before mounting the victor's platform to receive the Gold Medal everybody else had assumed would be Karelin's. We can only imagine Kissinger's reaction.

Grappling With Death

Knowing that most observers considered his victory over Karelin to be a fluke, Rulon entered the Greco-Roman world championship tournament in Patras, Greece, in December 2001. Among those standing between Rulon and another medal was rising Russian superstar Yuri Patrikeev--known in some circles as "Baby Karelin"--who had beaten him twice before.

In their quarterfinal match at Patras, Patrikeev took an early lead before Rulon pinned him in the closing seconds. Gardner tore through the rest of the field to claim the world title. Now holding both the Olympic gold and the world title, Rulon had climbed to the summit of the wrestling world.

Two months later, he nearly died.

On February 14, 2002, amid relatively mild 30-degree weather, Rulon and a group of friends took off on what was supposed to be a three-hour snowmobile excursion. After getting separated from his friends, Rulon crisscrossed the Salt River trying to find the trail, repeatedly breaking through the ice into shallow water. At one point, finding what appeared to be his friends' trail, Rulon tried to climb a ridge, only to find it was too steep. His snowmobile flipped him backwards into freezing water.

By this time, night was descending and the temperature was dropping. Protected only by a light fleece jacket, Rulon was freezing, hungry and exhausted. "I tried to walk out, but the snow was four fleet deep," be recounted. "It was so cold I laid down on the ice in the river for 10 or 15 minutes. But I knew I had to get out of there or I was going to die."

Bone-weary, but aware that sleeping may mean death, Rulon placed himself in awkward positions "so it would hurt and I'd wake up in five or ten minutes." He also practiced the same mental discipline that had led to victory in Sydney: "I said to myself, be strong and be focused and don't give up." During one of his brief naps, he said, he drew strength from a dream in which he saw Jesus.

By morning, the temperature had plummeted to 25 degrees below zero. Rulon was sheathed with ice from head to toe, and his feet were granite-hard chunks of frozen flesh. Hoping to melt the ice covering his feet and clothes, Rulon moved about 45 feet from his resting place--an effort that consumed his remaining strength. Providentially, a search plane spotted him and sent for a rescue helicopter.

Rulon's core body temperature had plunged to 80 degrees. He was rushed to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls to be treated for frostbite. It was considered miraculous that he survived the ordeal. The physicians first thought it would be necessary to amputate Rulon's severely frostbitten feet. With the help of several skin grafts, Rulon's feet were spared--but it was necessary to remove the middle toe of his right foot. It was doubtful that he would ever walk again, much less wrestle--let alone compete at a global level.

Another Comeback

In Greco-Roman wrestling, balance and leverage are all-important: both are seriously undermined by a missing toe. Nevertheless, once his physical therapy was finished, Rulon resumed his training with the goal of returning to the Olympics.

Apart from the predictable frustrations and disappointments, Rulon's comeback appeared to be plagued with persistent ill fortune. While riding to a workout at the Olympic training complex in Colorado Springs last April, Rulon crashed his custom Harley-Davidson when a driver suddenly pulled in front of him. Just prior to the collision, Rulon leapt from his motorcycle, doing a front dive roll into the street.

Shortly after emerging practically unscathed from the motorcycle wreck, Rulon dislocated his right wrist and several fingers in a pickup basketball game. At the national championships a few days later he lost to Army Staff Sergeant Dremiel Breyers. To get back to the Olympics, Rulon had to win a challenge tournament in May, and then defeat Breyers (who had earned a bye in the tournament) in a best of-three series on the following day.

Shortly before the challenge tournament at Indianapolis's RCA Dome, Rulon had surgeons remove the three pins that had been inserted into his injured wrist. Competing with a bandaged wrist, Rulon easily won his first two matches while Sgt. Breyers prepared for the next day's two-out-of-three tilt.

Before their first match, Gardner and Breyers--friendly but determined rivals--knelt together at the side of the mat to pray. Rulon took the first match in overtime, 2-1. Breyers seized an early advantage in the second bout, turning Rulon's back to the mat to score a single point--only to have Rulon respond by flipping Bryers to tie the score. Once again, the competition went into overtime, and Rulon, just as he had with Karelin, forced Breyers to break a clinch, scoring the decisive point and earning a return trip to the Olympics in Athens. Sgt. Breyers promised to accompany him as a training partner "to help him get another medal and have our flag raised."

"In the last two months," commented Rulon after winning an Olympic berth, "I thought it was pretty well virtually impossible, more than winning the first gold medal. That's about the only way I can describe what I've been through for the last few years--it's a miracle just to be here."

Rulon credits his faith in God and his solid family background for his strength of character. And like Milo of old, he insists that his remarkable wrestling success is a product of his farm upbringing. "Growing up on the farm like I did," he observes, "[I learned] if you're going to start a job, you go out and finish the job--you stay out there until it is done."