The culprit: one of his own wrestlers. They were wrestling around when an inadvertent headbutt knocked it out. Gardner says the whole front of his mouth is veneer anyway, a result of decades of inadvertent headbutts. Wrestling has taken Gardner to 44 countries. The Herriman High wrestling room has one regulation-sized circle, and the dark blue mat extends out to light blue padded walls.
Gardner became famous as a Wyoming farm boy, but his Mormon family has ties back to Utah for generations. His great-great-grandfather Archibald Gardner was a bishop in the church and helped build the famed Salt Lake Temple. When the high school team needed a new coach soon after that, he got the job. The four state qualifiers pair off.
There are two lightweights and two heavyweights, making for convenient practice partners. Rulon draws on his own experience, knowing what made the best preparation for him before countless tournaments at the highest possible levels. He walks around the perimeter of the room, shoes off, thick white socks resting below his tree-trunk calves, and watches his kids spar.
Some of the advice is technical, some is motivational. You gotta get up! Nearly a dozen younger members of the team who failed to qualify for States are doing their own drills in one corner of the room. At the end of practice, Gardner has the team sit on a rolled-up mat in the corner of the room so he and the assistants can deliver a speech.
He talks to the state qualifiers about visualizing their day. After the speeches, assistant coach Rad Martinez gathers everyone in the center of the mat. He tells everyone to put their hands in.
Gardner is rolling two full suitcases behind him through the corridor outside a series of ballrooms at a DoubleTree hotel in New Jersey. He turns the corner and ditches the Velcro brace on his right wrist. He pops his head in the back of the room, looking out at the men and women in business attire, sitting in rows and staring ahead at a PowerPoint presentation about the insurance industry.
Gardner stands in front of the crowd and runs through his well-rehearsed life story. From the Wyoming farm where he grew up the youngest of nine siblings, through his struggles as a student with dyslexia, all the way to the Olympic medal stand, to his night on the mountain and back to the Olympic podium. He talks about his Seven Steps to Success, which are outlined in his autobiography. He apologizes to the room for his hoarse voice, which he blames on his coaching.
On the posters, Rulon is frozen in time, even as those days move further in the rearview. On this very trip, he was disappointed because he would have liked to go to the famed Carnegie Deli, whose main restaurant in Manhattan closed in after nearly 80 years.
But life moves on. Now, his dark gray, short-sleeve button-down shirt dangles over his belly and hangs out in front of him, unlike the singlets that cling to his body in both the poster and on the book cover.
But the shaved head and approachable demeanor remain. Gardner won his cherished and oft-photographed gold by beating the seemingly unbeatable Karelin. Attendees stand in line for a minute of his attention. Gardner poses for photo after photo, always holding the bronze medal and letting his admirers hold the gold. He lifts women up off the ground with one arm, if they want him to, and most of them do.
He lets the manager of one local insurance outlet put him in a headlock for their photo. The office sits in a strip of brick storefronts, and the front door opens to a wall of pristine, snowcapped mountains.
While Gardner has been working out of the office for a few months, he officially moved his stuff in last night. He bought a house nearby, so his only long commute is up I to the high school. He again cuts a hulking figure, now situated behind a desk in a Dri-FIT, long-sleeved black athletic shirt, gray slacks and black sneakers. On the desk he has nothing but a binder, a notebook and a red Powerade Zero Sugar. Empty shelves line the wall to his right, but various items from his vast memorabilia collection fill the ones to his left.
He has a torch from the Salt Lake City Olympics, which he got to carry right before his snowmobile accident. He has awards, trophies and plaques, plus T-shirts signed by fellow Olympians.
The memories and Sharpie ink fade with time. Simmons can conjure. His family barn burned down when he was a kid. Before the Olympic Trials he was in a motorcycle accident and then dislocated his right wrist punching the bleachers after losing his cool during a pickup basketball game. Three years later he walked away from a plane crash into Lake Powell with only a minor hip injury and a concussion.
Gardner took the tests required to get his insurance license in The branch is independent, meaning they can sell policies through multiple insurance companies. A potential new client comes in for what Rulon calls a one-on-one. Rulon schmoozes, telling stories and jokes before Lydia steers things back toward business. Rulon raves about Lydia, who has years of experience working in the Utah Insurance Department, and he alternately calls her both the brains and the muscle of the operation.
He certainly has no problem using his name to draw people in. Perhaps most importantly, in this whole arrangement, is that the company is accommodating of his schedule. In a normal year, not interrupted by a pandemic, the high school wrestling season runs November to February. The state tournament is an all-day affair on both Wednesday and Thursday, and JRI has no issue with him logging those hours at the arena. Consider those client recruitment days anyway, with Coach Rulon happily passing along his fliers to a steady stream of coaches, parents, tournament officials and others eager to chat him up between matches.
The arena at Utah Valley University is set up with eight wrestling mats in two rows of four. Gardner has a little car and a little traveling companion: Gus. Hundreds of wrestlers are running around, stretching or sparring to warm up. Gardner is standing along the center line between the rows of mats with an eye on his four guys, who are split into pairs to get loose.
One of his lightweights catches an elbow in the wrong spot and blood pours from his nose, seeping into his warm-up shirt and splattering on the crowded mat.
Nobody bats an eye as the wrestler shoves gauze up his nostril and his practice partner sprays the mat down with disinfectant. Officially, Rulon is coaching four kids at States. Practically speaking, he is coaching more than that. Rulon even gave him his phone number so they could text each other. In some ways, Gardner blends in amid the hundreds of wrestlers and dozens of coaches. Everyone is focused, with the pressure of lifelong individual dreams, team titles and possibly college scholarships on the line.
In other ways, Rulon has a presence. They clear the floor and the jumbotron hanging from the ceiling lists which bouts will begin on which mats.
On-deck wrestlers stay on the floor in the warmup area as those with a longer wait time retreat to the bleachers. Each mat is set up the same. Most coaches sit in the chairs, but Rulon stands behind his. He says he liked when his coaches would stand, and he thinks it helps him be more animated. Jack gets out to an early lead, but is pinned despite being ahead in points. Jack has his head down, arms grabbing the trusses along the side of the metal bleachers.
He leans against the metal barricade, right next to the folded-up wall of lower level seats that can extend to cover the floor. He stands alone, essentially in the corner of the gym farthest away from any crowd. Just an Olympic champion, quietly watching the high-schoolers competing in front of him, chatting only when somebody new sidles up next to him and starts a conversation. He deserves all the accolades that he has. He remembers coming home to the Wyoming state tournament shortly after he won Olympic gold, when his mere presence was too much of a disruption.
He had to leave and go to a nearby mall to accommodate all the people who wanted to talk to him and get autographs. You want me to do a clinic for free? Can I talk to the parents about insurance afterward? You want me to come give a speech? Do you pay other people? He jokes that it took him too long to figure one con that was pulled on him repeatedly: Organizations would make up some award to give him, largely as an excuse to get him to show up for free for an event to which they could sell tickets.
Now he knows better. But despite being the most recognizable face in the gym, one of the most eventful parts of his day is when a tournament official informs him that he has to wear his credential.
But policy is policy. He clips his ID to a carpenter loop on his pants. His two lightweights are both eliminated on Day 1 but the two heavier weights, Talmage Carman and Traycee Norman, win two matches apiece. The real prize for me in participating on the show was regaining my life back and thanks to the show I have accomplished that. Another exciting outcome is that I am strongly considering a return to competitive wrestling. All reality blurred content is independently selected, including links to products or services.
However, if you buy something after clicking an affiliate link, I may earn a commission, which helps support reality blurred. Learn more. NBC released a statement that "Rulon chose to leave the show for personal reasons and we respected his wishes. We wish him well. He weighed pounds when he competed in the Olympics. Gardner won a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at the Olympics, and followed that with a bronze medal at the Games.
He then announced his retirement from the sport. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs over the weekend for wrestling workouts. I think, for the most part, I'm ready to go home.
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