Watching the 1972 Olympics on ABC forty years ago, I was introduced to America's most important amateur wrestler ..... and here today (on his 64th birthday) is his story (after the jump) ....
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ABC (and now NBC) specialize in using Up Close and Personal features to introduce us to Olympic athletes in sports not usually in the limelight. Such was the case with this profile of the amateur wrestler Dan Gable - and what caught my eye (along with my brother and best friend JG) was the poster he had in his basement in this video. At the 3:50 mark mark was the lettering (that resembled Ringling Brothers style) that said "BEAT RUSSIANS" - which I spilled my soda over, I was laughing so hard.
Yet it pointed the way towards the goal he had: to win the Olympic gold medal in his weight class (lightweight division). In fact, he did not surrender a point in the entire competition in winning that gold. And yet that was not the first time he had set a profound goal for himself.
Growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, Dan Gable had already been an adept wrestler in junior high school and - since freshmen were not eligible to compete on the varsity in those days - began his amazing career as a sophomore. That same year (1964) his older sister Diane was brutally raped and then murdered ... and by a classmate neighbor of Dan, no less (special note: her killer died just last year in prison). Gable has spoken of the impact her death had on his life - and this was a common thought:
He couldn't bring her back. He could only wrestle. "I was wrestling to recover, to lift my family up somehow," he says. "I thought every match could make things a little better." No variation. No distractions.
And did he produce. He was undefeated (64-0) in his high school career and - since college athletics also did not allow freshman to play varsity sports - began his career as a sophomore and won .... and won ...... and won ...... racking up a cumulative (high school and collegiate) 181-0 record, winning two NCAA championships leading up to his third title match on March 28, 1970 .... when the unthinkable happened.
It may seem odd to focus much of this essay on his one loss as a schoolboy .... but then again, people who hadn't watched the TV game show "Jeopardy!" in years did so when they learned that Ken Jennings had finally lost (after going 74-0).
At McGaw Hall on the campus of Northwestern University in suburban Chicago (called the Welsh-Ryan Arena today) - which had a sell-out crowd of 8,800, rare for a wrestling event in those days - things were .... a little strange for Dan Gable.
Two nights before the match, he attended a banquet in which he was honored as wrestling's man of the year. He never went to banquets. He didn't care about awards. Why now? Thirty minutes before the final, when he should have been going through his routine, 10-9-8 ..., he was taping a television interview, stumbling through takes in which he looked into the camera and tempted the fates: "Hi, I'm Dan Gable. Come watch me finish my career 182-0." Why now?
But the main reason came from his opponent ...whom Dan Gable had already defeated (by a score of 13-4) at the 1968 Olympic Trials.
Larry Owings was an Oregon native who now wrestled for the University of Washington squad (as an architecture major). Two years younger than Gable, he had wanted another chance but - having grown rapidly - was now in a higher weight class (173) than Dan Gable's (142). Owings decided to drop down first to 158, then to 142 during the 1969-1970 season - which was easier to do in the rules then governing wrestling (which some wrestlers did routinely, moving up/down in weight as to fill a gap in their team's needs ... or to avoid a particular foe).
Larry Owings did one other thing: while most of Gable's opponents laid low and said little before their matches: Owings not only announced that he was dropping his weight class to face Gable but also ...... at a TV interview conducted by ABC TV's Bud Palmer at weigh-in:
"Larry, why, particularly with such a successful sophomore season in the Pacific loop at 158 pounds, would you drop a weight class that will be impossible to win because of Gable's presence?" Palmer asked.
Larry's eyes burned audaciously. He was first silent, then he spoke slowly and concisely. "I'll beat him," he stated in the most determined tone imaginable.
And while Dan Gable had always prepared diligently for each of his opponents (noting Owings' best move, an inside reverse cradle, on films) going into this match things were different:
".... I was distracted by Larry Owings. It was a name I had not come across too much ahead of time, but I began paying more attention to him. I don't know if he planned it or not, but he got inside my head."
The long-awaited match (which ABC's "Wide World of Sports" covered) began with a quick takedown by Gable ... but he later said that - for the first time - he felt tired after the first of three periods (and not afterwards).
Then in the second period, Owings did something that had rarely happened: he lifted Gable into a fireman's carry, with a hard takedown. Gable managed to make a comeback, but was trailing 8-6 going into the third and final period ... and Owings would begin in the top position.
Yet with only 30 seconds left Gable was - although technically behind on the scoreboard by a point - actually leading by a point, since he was entitled to two points "riding time" (for % control of the match) - and could have stalled to a victory. But he had never wrestled that way before, and wasn't about to start now .... despite the fact that he had rarely had to go the full 8-minute length and was tired ... and as Dan Gable admitted later, he got greedy .....
(Gable) tried an arm-bar move, coming over Owings' shoulder in an attempt to lock him up and take him down. This was Owings' opportunity, the fateful moment when his never-used leg sweep caught Gable by surprise. Referee Pascal Perri later said the takedown was "the greatest single move of Owings' career."
After Owings got both a takedown and a near-fall out of the move, Gable salvaged an escape - yet didn't realize that the score was now (including riding time) 13-11 for Owings - this was perhaps in part due to the referee having to explain the points to the official scorer (as an ABC cameraman had gotten in the way when he initially signalled his awarding of points to the scorer).
After going out of bounds, Gable (on right, in first photo below) finally realized he was losing - and with only 3 seconds left. Owings could have simply stalled but - since he was just as competitive as Gable was - Owings, too, risked attempting another takedown (afterwards realizing Gable could have used his signature counter-move to gain 2 points and thus force an overtime period) ... but Gable admitted he was spent not only physically but mentally and had nothing left.
The photo below right shows a sight unseen before .... the referee raising the hand of Dan Gable's opponent in victory, although Gable did receive a seventy-five second standing ovation during the awards ceremony.
For the life of me, I can't find a jpeg of it ... but even though Dan Gable's Iowa State Cyclones had won the overall team title: can you just imagine people reading this headline in the Des Moines Register (Iowa's newspaper of record)?!?! Actually, you can see it at the 3:00 mark (of the video at the top of this essay):
"TITLE TO CYCLONES—GABLE FAILS!"
Dan Gable has said repeatedly he still regrets that losing match ... but admits it made him a better wrestler, and not only did he win the Olympic title as mentioned: he also defeated Owings 7-1 at the 1972 Olympic Trials. (Larry Owings is a retired schoolteacher today in his home state of Oregon, and I cannot locate a more recent photo than the 1980's shot on the right of the second set of photos further above).
And it was while he was preparing for those 1972 Olympics that something mundane led eventually to Dan Gable being hired (after graduation from Iowa State) - shockingly - by their arch-rivals, the University of Iowa. As one account suggested, "It was akin to a Heisman Trophy quarterback for Michigan accepting a coaching position at Ohio State. It was like a star point guard at Duke crossing over to call the shots on the sidelines at North Carolina".
Gable had been a graduate assistant working for head coach Harold Nichols at Iowa State, but the school had been dragging its feet in promising him a full-time assistant's job (that would lead to the top spot when Nichols retired in a few years). Meanwhile, the University of Iowa Hawkeyes sensed an opportunity, and worked on enticing him to join their staff. They also learned that Gable's Olympic preparation was hampered by a knee injury, so that he was using quite a bit of tape on it each day.
So much so that - since getting supplies from Iowa State was a chore, with Gable eventually having to pay for it himself (on a graduate assistant's meager earnings in 1972) if he wanted to be able to tape his knee to the extent he wanted each day ... the U of Iowa's trainer secretly mailed Gable a box of five dozen rolls of tape (valued at $100) that was enough to last Dan Gable throughout the Olympics. Then the school followed-up with an assistant coach job offer - which he took, to the chagrin of Cyclone fans. And he was as successful a coach as a competitor.
Dan Gable was promoted to the head coaching spot in 1976 - and in a career stretching to 1997, he attained Red Auerbach-like results: 15 NCAA team titles (with nine championships in a row) before retiring after having undergone hip replacement surgery (with the years of training finally taking their toll). He spent the next several years in various capacities at the Iowa Athletic Department (and writing this book on the sport shown above) before finally retiring last year.
Dan Gable has long been courted by GOP politicians but said no even to you-know who ...
"Not too long ago, the state of Iowa tried to get me to look into the governorship," Gable said. "They actually flew me to Washington D.C. I went through the whole scenario and I met everybody and I was in meetings with (George W.) Bush's top advisor Karl Rove. When I walked out of that meeting, I said, 'no way', because his only words to me in the White House was 'Coach, you can never be yourself again.'"
"I said well, that's not what got me where I'm at. I had pretty good support systems but I'm going to have to use my own brain and make my own decisions."
Dan Gable was inducted into the Iowa Sports Hall of Fame, was voted by Sports Illustrated as being the
Greatest Iowa Athlete of the 20th Century (edging out Bob Feller), had
a statue dedicated earlier this year ... and as mentioned earlier: since today is his 64th birthday, today has been officially proclaimed
Dan Gable Day in the state of Iowa.
Happy Birthday!
Now, on to Top Comments:
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From Debby:
In the diary by Kaili Joy Gray about CNN's pulling a faulty story about how women's voting is ruled by their menstrual cycles - CoExistNow has a brilliant comment.
From
peregrine kate:
In the diary by xaxnar about how Daily Kos should hire a new front-pager now that Clark Kent is leaving the Daily Planet to become a blogger - Olympia believes that Clark Kent is already a front-pager.
From
Steveningen:
In my own Top Comments diary about marriage equality - BeninSC has an analysis that's just exceptional.
In the front-page about the saga that are the Log Cabin Republicans: corvo was simple, to the point, and absolutely spot on.
And from
Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the diary by Mets102 about President Obama's thought that Ayn Rand is for misunderstood teenagers - bosdcla14 relates this back to his own school days quite nicely.
And in the diary by raptavio over meeting the late Paul Wellstone, LeftHandedMan wonders quite poignantly, "I hope he's proud of us".
TOP PHOTOS
October 24, 2012
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Absent tonight is yesterday's Top Mojo (which is malfunctioning; hopefully will return soon).
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