back to indexDan Gable: Olympic Wrestling, Mental Toughness & the Making of Champions | Lex Fridman Podcast #152
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The following is a conversation with Dan Gable
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from two years ago.
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I did not previously publish this conversation
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as part of this podcast, but as a separate thing.
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And as a result, it did not receive many listens.
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Let me be honest and say that while I usually
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don't care about how many listens or views something gets,
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in this one case, I feel like I failed one of my heroes.
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I feel I didn't properly introduce
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a truly special human being to an audience
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that might find him as inspiring as I did.
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Dan Gable is one of the greatest
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Olympic athletes of all time.
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Bigger than records and medals, to many like myself,
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he's a symbol of guts, spirit, mental toughness,
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and relentless hard work.
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As a wrestler, he was undefeated in high school,
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undefeated in college until his very last match.
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And having lost that match, he found another level
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and became a world champion and an Olympic champion.
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And most importantly, he did so
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perfectly dominating his opponents.
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He did not surrender a single point
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at the 1972 Olympic games.
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As a coach, he led the Iowa Hawkeyes to 15 national titles
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and 25 consecutive Big Ten championships.
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He coached 152 All Americans, 45 national champions,
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106 Big Ten champions, and 12 Olympians,
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including eight medalists.
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He's the author of several books,
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including A Wrestling Life One and Two,
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and Coaching Wrestling Successfully.
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Quick mention of our sponsors.
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So the choice is AI, privacy, grammar, or safety.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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And if you wish, click the sponsor links below
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to get a discount and to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that I spent a few days in Iowa
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and got to attend a wrestling duel meet
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in the historic Carver Hawkeye Arena.
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Part of me wanted to stay in Iowa forever
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to drill takedowns, to start a family, to live life simply.
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Wrestling is one of the pure sports,
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both beautiful and brutal,
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where both mental toughness and technical mastery
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of the highest form are rewarded with victory,
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and everything else is punished with defeat.
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And every such loss weighs heavy on the minds
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of anyone who has ever stepped on the wrestling mat,
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The same is true for one of the greatest wrestlers
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in history of the sport,
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the man who graciously welcomed me into his home
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for this conversation, the legend, Dan Gable.
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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
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support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter
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And now, here's my conversation with Dan Gable.
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You're persistent, I love that,
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because you've been trying to get me on this podcast
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And until I saw you on another podcast
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and you said you were Russian, did I call you back?
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Because Russia to me, you know,
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is leading the world in wrestling almost every year.
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What's the difference between American wrestling
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and Russian wrestling?
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You showed me this painting.
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Well, it's MIT, it's science.
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And they really study the sport.
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They're really good technically.
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They're really, really good in strategy.
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They don't really push like the real toughness.
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They don't push like conditioning.
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And so Americans, we need what they have.
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Russians need what we have.
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And when you get the two together.
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And for me, why I could beat the Russians
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is because I went their way a little bit.
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But I kept my toughness.
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But you're known, you're known for your toughness.
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Yeah, but I wasn't known for my art.
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I wasn't known for my science.
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So when did you become a bit of an artist?
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The Larry Owens loss.
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Most people thought I was already an artist
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just because I won 181 straight matches in seven years.
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And not just winning, but you know,
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kind of punishing people.
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And from that point of view,
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yeah, I might've been pretty good,
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but I had a long ways to go yet.
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And I didn't really realize that,
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or I should say, I didn't really know
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how to get it out of me until I had a loss.
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And then I realized I gotta buckle down,
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learn some of that science, become more of an artist.
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How do you become an artist?
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So the Russian way has this drilling technique,
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thousands of reps.
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How do you think you work on the science, the art part?
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You gotta study the best in the world.
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I think Dave Schultz was our guy in America
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that probably showed us that being artistic,
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And he studied it.
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He went over there as a high schooler
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and rustled in some major tournaments over there.
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And he saw their ways.
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He used that Russian science
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and then he was already an American
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and he saw how I trained athletes.
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He saw what I did in the Olympics,
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saw what other people, how we held up,
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and he applied that as well.
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But I'd have to say he was more the artistic type.
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He was more of a Russian than an American
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when it came to wrestling.
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You've coached 45 national champions,
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106 Big Ten champions, and eight Olympic medalists,
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which is incredible.
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What is a common thread between them
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and what are maybe some of the fundamental differences?
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I think the common thread is that
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they all had one of those two avenues
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that we talked already
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and because we intertwined them.
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So in a Russian wrestling room, they got the same people.
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Most of the time in an American wrestling room,
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we had the same people.
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But when I was out recruiting,
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at first I recruited just attitude,
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but I needed more than that.
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I needed some genetics in that wrestling room
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to actually, that hard work people,
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they could look and see, wow,
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that execution, that's unbelievable.
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But yet I can beat that guy after the first minute.
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So you think the art, the technique is genetics.
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You're born with it.
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You think it's not something.
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I think your pop and your ability to move.
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And timing and your quickness and your strength.
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The Russians, they usually picked out
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the people that can go into that sport.
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That was the old fashioned sports school.
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But it's mostly like when you walk into a Russian
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wrestling room, you see them hitting skills, techniques.
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You don't see them banging against each other that much.
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But then when practice is over,
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you might not see a bunch of sprints.
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You might see them walk over to the ropes
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and they drop down from the ceiling
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and they'll jump up and climb a rope, boom, boom, boom.
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And then they come down and then they don't jump
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They have three or four other guys go
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and then they jump back on.
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Whereas I probably made my guys climb them,
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get right back down, climb them right back again.
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But I also realized that I had to have a mix of that.
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What was the role?
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What was your role?
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I mean, those guys looked up and Dan Gable
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and what was the role in helping these athletes
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become their best?
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These national champions.
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Well, you had to first of all prove that you were,
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knew what you were doing.
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In terms of technique or in terms of hard work?
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Everything, everything.
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They just, you had to be the first guy there
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and the last guy to leave
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and you had to be the most dedicated guy,
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even though they were the ones that's trying to
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win the championships.
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You had to prove that you were gonna work just as hard
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as they were as a coach.
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And what does that look like?
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So you can see it when you, you know it when you see it?
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Well, you're there ahead of them
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and you're there after they leave.
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I'm picking up after them and you're analyzing them.
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You outwork them, you outwork them and you outthink them.
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And so, you know, use that type of strategy.
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And over time, when you prove it works,
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because some of my kids that were the best kids
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in the world really shouldn't have been a wrestler.
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I mean, they weren't very coordinated,
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but they worked so hard to develop themselves.
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What was your role in that process?
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I mean, that means pushing kids to their limit.
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Yeah, but you can't push kids to their limit.
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And even when you push them to their limit,
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that's not their limit
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because their limit's above and beyond that.
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I mean, yeah, coaches sometimes accidentally don't,
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they lose kids because of the heat,
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because of hard work and all that.
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And you gotta know when to back off.
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You gotta read your athletes.
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And by that, I mean, you gotta know them pretty well.
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Every once in a while, you make a little bit of a mistake,
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but if you don't react right on that mistake
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before it gets too far, then it's gonna be a casualty.
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And I don't mean somebody dying necessarily,
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but maybe something that could turn them off
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or maybe something that could run them away
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or maybe something that, wow, that was close.
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Maybe shouldn't have pushed them that far.
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So you really have to be very educated.
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And it's not just what you know,
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it's what you know about them.
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And I'm not talking about the team.
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I'm talking about each guy on the team.
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Individuals, yeah.
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Yeah, each person on the team.
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And you know it how?
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You see it in their eyes?
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You know it how because you're the first one there
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and you're the last one to leave
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and you set in the environment with them.
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You're there in the morning for practice sometimes.
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You're there in the afternoon for two or three hours.
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After practice, you might have a hot room
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or you might have a sauna or a steam or a whirlpool
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and you get in there with them and you listen.
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You're not just feeding out information.
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You do that, but you're taking in a lot of that too.
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And I'm telling you, when you get in an atmosphere
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that they're relaxed and they feel comfortable,
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it's like a massage.
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And that's after practice in one of those areas
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that people are around you, you learn a lot.
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I mean, you got a lot to learn as a coach.
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And when you get in that atmosphere,
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when all of a sudden you feel like very comfortable,
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words start flowing.
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And when those words flow, you take them in as a coach.
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And there's something probably gonna be said
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that you can do and act upon
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that's gonna help certain situations.
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I've saved a couple of kids lives for sure
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that were on the brink.
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Sometimes performance is at such a high level
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in a high level atmosphere
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that life and death is actually involved.
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And I don't mean pushing a kid to where he just dies,
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but I mean, he might feel himself as a failure.
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He might go home and take his own life.
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Yeah, I mean, but that's part of it.
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You're putting so much heart,
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so much blood and heart and sweat
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and your whole meaning of life becomes winning.
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So, and sometimes it's so hard to lose within that context.
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So if in your, I think the first wrestling life
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you wrote about Chad Zapato who lost,
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I mean, incredible wrestler,
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but lost in three finals in the nationals
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and has this tattoo of a hawk clawing out the human heart.
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Yeah, so what lessons, is there any lessons
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from the incredible wrestling he's done,
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but also the incredible suffering that he went through
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Yeah, again, you like that word suffering, which is okay.
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No, no, no, no, no, keep it, keep it.
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Cause it fits right in where I want.
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I have to turn that suffering around
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to where he makes and feels good about himself
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or better, doesn't have to feel perfect.
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Cause he did lose, you know?
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And so, but you have to actually get him to realize
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that yeah, he's still unique
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compared to the walk of the earth.
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He was unbelievably unique right at the top,
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just a little bit short of,
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but because it was, you know, he felt the suffering,
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you now have to go about and change that
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and put it into goodwill some way.
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And because he's, you really have a lot of goodwill,
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you can do a lot of goodwill.
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And so, and it's not easy.
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It took him probably years, years of tattooing.
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Years of covering the tattoos.
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And, you know, he told me he moved to,
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I go, why are you moving to California?
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Cause he was here for a couple of years
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after his wrestling was done, cause he had a good job
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around here and he was, I thought he was doing a good job,
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but he just, he said, I had to escape, you know?
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Yeah, it's the same as the covering up the tattoo.
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I had a wrestling terminology.
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I have to get, I hate to say this, I hate to say this.
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I go, where are you going?
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He said, I'm gonna go to California.
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And I go, is there any reason why you're going to California?
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And he says, that's where everybody goes to hide.
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But I said, I think you're wrong there,
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but you know, I think what will determine your life
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will be what you do from now on, you know?
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And if you can find, and he's actually turned it around.
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I mean, he's actually turned it around.
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You have to discover that yourself.
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Exactly, and he went someplace
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that he thought he could fit into, and I think he did.
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And I think he's got a good job, and he's helping people,
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and he covered that tattoo with feathers, another tattoo.
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Well, in the end, it's a beautiful story.
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Yeah, it is, it really is.
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Suffering and overcoming.
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Yeah, and he's not done yet.
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He's not done yet.
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No, he's not done.
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He's got a lot more to do.
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So you mentioned Roger Bannister,
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again, I think in your first book,
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and somebody you looked up to,
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that's the man who broke the four minute mile, right?
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When everybody said it was impossible,
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everyone thought it was impossible.
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Oh, they thought he would die.
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It's not humanly possible, yeah.
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Well, you've done your homework.
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For what, the book, or what?
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Oh, I don't know, for me, you've done your homework.
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Yeah, I know, but yeah.
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I was sitting here by Putin to do research, yeah.
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So what lesson do you take from that story for yourself,
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the impossible, trying to accomplish the impossible?
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Well, the impossible is possible.
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It's just that simple.
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Time changes things.
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I mean, if you looked at where the mile time is right now,
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compared to that four minute mile,
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which when it was broke by a couple of tenths,
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or three or four tenths,
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it's now broke by another 20 seconds.
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Yeah, by several hundred people, yeah.
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Yeah, I mean, by tons of people.
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And it's pretty much common knowledge
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that you gotta run a four minute mile
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if you're gonna go somewhere now,
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or below if you're gonna win events at major level,
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that you gotta be able to do that.
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And so you can take that,
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and you can look at what in time history
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has as its record performance,
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and you can realize that that record performance,
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it's gonna change.
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And they don't take into all the factors of knowledge.
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They don't take in all the factors of better shoes.
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They don't take in all the factors
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of better understanding of nutrition.
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I mean, it's like me as an athlete.
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I went to practice every day in high school
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for at least my sophomore, and my junior,
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and part of my senior year,
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and all of a sudden a new rule came up.
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It said, the rule said before that,
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it said at least most of the coaches,
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we don't want you drinking water at practice.
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Because you gotta toughen you up.
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That's a weakness, water.
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And so we would go through practice.
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I mean, and you're sweating,
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and then you're sweating so much
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that you're almost out of sweat.
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And so you're mostly at the end of practice,
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you're not even wrestling.
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You're setting against the wall.
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Because you're tired.
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So then all of a sudden they say,
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okay, go ahead and drink water during practice,
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drink greater aid during practice.
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And all of a sudden at the end of practice,
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we're still out there competing.
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And so I look at my career for two and a half years
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where I, and junior high too.
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So I got another three years
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where I didn't really, wasn't able to push
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as good as I could because I just was probably under.
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So, but at the individual level,
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in terms of the impossible,
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when did you first believe the thing
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that maybe probably people would laugh at you about
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was that you would be an Olympic champion?
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Well, I always visualized me being the best.
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You believed it in the very beginning.
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Yeah, I was, because I was,
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I don't know if you'd call it a dreamer or somebody that,
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I was just involved with competitive sports
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at the YMCA from age five.
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Did you tell people that dream
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that you're gonna be Olympic champion one day?
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You're gonna be the best in the world?
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I think they knew.
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And the only reason why they knew,
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cause there was something a little different
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He's not gonna stop.
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Well, he was out in the yard.
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And he was swinging baseball bats.
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He was swinging baseball at six, at seven,
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and eight, and nine, and 10.
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And he was swinging baseball bats,
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so much right handed and so much left hand
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with nobody even there throwing the ball.
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That all of a sudden when they walked by,
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all of a sudden the grass was down to dirt
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So it's like, they saw me out in the yard
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playing by myself sports,
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or you get the neighborhood kids and you play a lot.
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But if they weren't there,
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if you walked in my front room,
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I was hiking a ball like I was the quarterback.
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And I was running and running through the furniture,
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So who saw this guy mostly was probably the parents.
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And the coaches at the YMCA level,
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the junior high level,
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they saw this guy come first and end up last.
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But I wasn't that great.
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I wasn't the fastest guy at that time.
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And I wasn't the strongest guy.
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Actually, before I went to the Olympics,
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when they tested me, they tested everybody.
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And I probably came back with one of the highest scores,
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but it was not like the highest person on this
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and this and that.
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I was all high across the board,
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straight across the board high on every one of them.
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But there was always people that were higher than me.
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But then they would go down.
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Then they would test on something else and go back up.
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Mine stayed high all across the board.
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And so I really didn't have too many flaws,
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but I didn't have any things that also said
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that you were gonna be unscored upon at the Olympic games.
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So take me through that day, if you could.
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1972, when you were going for the 68 kilogram
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freestyle wrestling gold,
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you scored 57 points, if I'm correct,
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and had zero points scored on you.
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So maybe take me through almost the details.
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What was your routine?
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What was your process?
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What was going through your mind,
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your thoughts of that day?
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Yeah, first of all, it was quite a day
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because we weighed in every day at that time.
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Yeah, we weighed in two hours
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before the start of the competition.
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And so that didn't mean that you weighed in two hours
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before you wrestled,
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because you didn't know whether you're gonna wrestle
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right away or later on.
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In fact, in that day,
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I don't think I wrestled until later on in the evening.
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So had all day to recover,
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but I didn't really need it anyway,
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because I wasn't really pulling a whole lot of weight,
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but it was just interesting.
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But what was in your mind?
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What were you thinking?
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You knew you were gonna win the gold.
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Yeah, I knew I was gonna win.
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But in reality, I didn't know it
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from a cocky point of view.
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I only knew it because for the last
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one, two, three and a half years,
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I had been going to practice,
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and I'd win in every practice.
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You felt good, you won.
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And I hardly ever lose a takedown.
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And if I lost, if somebody scored on me,
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it was like when I went to bed,
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I couldn't sleep until I figured it out.
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Or if I didn't figure it out,
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I would fall asleep and I would wake up
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with the answer of what I needed,
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why I got scored upon.
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So maybe now that you've won the gold,
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can you tell me in the practice room
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when somebody took you down,
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how do you take Dan Gable down in the practice room?
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Timing, technique?
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Very difficult, but somebody could,
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because they were going for one move.
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All I wanted was one move.
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Whereas if you can arrest somebody,
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arrest them the whole practice or half a practice
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for at least 10, 15 minutes,
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and they were maybe gonna score
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if they could work it in their mind.
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But they knew that was gonna be their victory.
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So in the practice room, maybe you can educate me,
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at that, when you're going for the Olympic gold,
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you didn't want to allow any takedowns.
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So there's no such thing as working
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on some kind of weird position,
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a weak point or something.
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It's important to not let down, take down.
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It's kind of like what we were saying before.
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If something happened and somebody scored on me
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in a certain way, I would go over that situation,
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over that situation, over it again,
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and I would come up with an answer.
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And then I would actually test it.
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Maybe I wouldn't go right back the next day
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because I didn't want the guy to not have some,
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I didn't want him to think that I was thinking
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about it all night, I didn't tell him.
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But maybe three days later when he wrestled again,
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I actually had it figured out because he wasn't able to.
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Or even if I was in on a takedown, an offensive move,
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and I got stopped and didn't score,
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I had to go back and filter that.
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But it wasn't something that usually I couldn't solve.
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I could usually solve it.
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Let's go back to the Olympic games.
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So I get up in the Olympic in the morning
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and I'm not sure when the weigh ins were,
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but I think I was probably a pound over.
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And that's about a half a kilo and 1.1 pounds is a kilo
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because we went in kilograms.
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So what do you do with that pound?
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You aren't off or?
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No, I just went over to the, they had a sauna there
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and I got in the sauna.
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And the funny thing was the morning of the finals,
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there was another athlete in the sauna.
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And it was American or?
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No, it was a European.
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I don't remember where she was from.
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Well, you know what?
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I kind of think it was a plot because it was a girl.
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And she didn't have her top on.
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And that was pretty common.
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And so, you know, it was kind of interesting.
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You think back about it because there's some funny things
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that go on behind the scenes in Olympic games,
link |
in world games, anytime when you have country
link |
And so there's some crazy stuff that goes on.
link |
Did any of it affect you?
link |
Well, I almost stayed too long in the sauna.
link |
You lost a little bit over a pound.
link |
I lost a little more than a pound.
link |
But it didn't really bother me
link |
because I wasn't like cutting a lot of weight.
link |
So your match against the Russian, the...
link |
He went on to be a two time world champion,
link |
a silver medalist as well.
link |
I mean, this is an incredible wrestler.
link |
So what was going through your mind
link |
before stepping on the mat with that guy?
link |
You've beaten a bunch of wrestlers,
link |
haven't had a point scored on you.
link |
And you're stepping on the mat against this Russian
link |
who you said was really, they picked,
link |
the Soviets picked to beat you.
link |
Right, and I know why they picked him
link |
because he had a great attitude.
link |
So he wasn't just the typical artist.
link |
He was a good artist.
link |
He hooked elbows like Azhelyov.
link |
And he's from that area of the world
link |
where they have some of those types of moves.
link |
But he, and he was a goer,
link |
but by cutting him down a weight,
link |
he lost some of that go.
link |
And I don't know if, you gotta,
link |
that's a process you gotta go about scientifically.
link |
And so, if you don't do it as an American,
link |
it can really hurt your performance.
link |
If you don't do it as a Russian,
link |
it can hurt your performance.
link |
And they already didn't really do that a lot
link |
where you usually wrestle the weight
link |
where it was more like your weight.
link |
And so by cutting him down,
link |
maybe slowed his belief down a little bit.
link |
So you saw it in him.
link |
The spirit was a little bit gone when you were facing him.
link |
Yeah, but then he came back and he won rest of the matches
link |
and he was in the round robin
link |
and he was able to go to the finals,
link |
but he had lost another match actually
link |
against in the round robin against the Japanese.
link |
So I think I had already gained enough of artistic,
link |
being able to finish a match.
link |
Once I lost my match in college for the last two years,
link |
I took on some of that artistic work.
link |
And I think that he was already hoping to win,
link |
but he was hoping to win by a long ways
link |
because he had to pin me or beat me by eight points
link |
to be able to win the gold.
link |
And that wasn't gonna happen.
link |
I mean, the chances of pin is pretty good.
link |
Is it hard to pin Dan Gable versus take down?
link |
Like, have you taken risks where you could pay for them?
link |
I can't remember too many that I took
link |
that would actually put me in a danger position.
link |
I've taken risk, but the risks were so scientifically,
link |
technically correct that I wouldn't land
link |
in that danger zone.
link |
It's like, if I'm gonna lock up and throw you,
link |
I'm not gonna throw you to my own back
link |
and roll you through.
link |
I'm gonna turn in the air.
link |
So you were scientific about it.
link |
I learned the hard way.
link |
Early on, there was moves from collegiate wrestling
link |
that you did that exposed your shoulders,
link |
which it cost me in some early freestyle matches
link |
against great wrestlers.
link |
But I would go back to my collegiate escaping type moves
link |
to where I hit a Granby roll
link |
where you expose your shoulders
link |
and you lose two points every time.
link |
But you learn that that's not the system.
link |
But if you hadn't wrestled much,
link |
you would get exposed under maybe a desperate situation.
link |
So you won the gold.
link |
I think it would have,
link |
I think the question would be how would it feel
link |
if you lost the gold for me?
link |
Because I already went through that once.
link |
Not at that highest level,
link |
but the National Collegiate Championship level
link |
The Larry Owings loss.
link |
Larry Owings, yeah.
link |
And that didn't sit well.
link |
Were you afraid of that happening again
link |
at the Olympic level?
link |
Was that even a thought?
link |
No, I really wasn't.
link |
But it was why I changed my philosophy of training
link |
and added to the scientific artist type.
link |
And if I had won that match,
link |
even though I wouldn't have felt good about it,
link |
even though I squeaked it out,
link |
I wasn't feeling good about that match.
link |
It would have affected me a little bit,
link |
but if I'd have won it,
link |
I would have got over it.
link |
I mean, I'm not over it now.
link |
I mean, I don't know why I was doing this kind of stuff
link |
right before my match.
link |
By that, I mean this kind of stuff.
link |
Interviews, yeah, journalists.
link |
Yeah, and I really wasn't a good talker then.
link |
I mean, me and you were talking pretty good right now,
link |
except for I got a little cold,
link |
but I don't think I could say two words hardly then.
link |
And they took takes.
link |
Wide World of Sports said,
link |
hey, we want you to be the introduction
link |
for our next week's show.
link |
So I just say, hey, I'm Dan Gable.
link |
Come watch me as I finish my career undefeated 182 and 0.
link |
That's what they want me to say.
link |
Everybody assumed you'd be undefeated.
link |
I had to take it 22 times.
link |
And the last two or three times they wrote it out
link |
and I read it and it still wasn't like I just said it.
link |
I was reading it like, hi, I'm Dan Gable.
link |
You know, that type of stuff.
link |
So, and he finally just closed the book and said,
link |
yeah, that's good enough.
link |
But I turned and it was my time to wrestle.
link |
And so, you know, you just, you learn that,
link |
and for me it was great coaching experience
link |
because that's what I turned into be.
link |
You know, I coached for longer than I wrestled.
link |
And I put out a lot of champions,
link |
but you learn through mistakes that even in your own career
link |
that you had made, you know, it's an ever learning process.
link |
It's an ever learning process.
link |
Have you ever been afraid on the mat?
link |
Does fear have any role do you think for a wrestler
link |
or it must be out there?
link |
Well, I'm sure fear is out there.
link |
And I'm sure that was to my advantage almost every time.
link |
I'm sure in my Olympic finals, I was really off.
link |
He had these doubts.
link |
He probably had these doubts.
link |
And that gives me the edge.
link |
And I don't know if I really ever had fear,
link |
but obviously there was points in times
link |
where I didn't perform as well, not many, but a few.
link |
And if I look back of it, look back at it,
link |
I don't think it was that American, you know,
link |
raw, raw, raw stuff.
link |
I think it was probably the fear
link |
of not being an artist as much.
link |
You know, maybe this guy might be better
link |
than me scientifically.
link |
And you know, you're a scientist.
link |
I think that got to me more than anything else.
link |
I said early on that I want to eliminate
link |
ever having to worry about getting tired in a match.
link |
So I kind of eliminated that.
link |
So I got rid of that point.
link |
And I do think that in wrestling,
link |
that is one of the fears that a lot of wrestlers have,
link |
actually how they feel during the match
link |
and are they gonna get tired
link |
and is it gonna affect my performance?
link |
And as a coach, that really was one of the things
link |
I tried to eliminate on all my athletes.
link |
So there wasn't that fear factor,
link |
but that fear factor would be put upon my opponent,
link |
which would give me an edge.
link |
But that's not what I needed as much.
link |
I needed to just focus,
link |
make sure that I was doing the right things.
link |
And I needed my team to be focused.
link |
So I made sure that for my mistakes as an athlete
link |
or even as a coach sometimes, that I didn't repeat them.
link |
Didn't repeat them.
link |
And if you make a mistake once and then you can repeat it,
link |
then it's like you didn't learn anything.
link |
Your goal throughout your wrestling career,
link |
as you've beautifully put,
link |
was to work so hard that you pass out on the mat, right?
link |
That you would be carried off the mat.
link |
So you never did successfully in,
link |
that's one of the ways you failed in your career
link |
is you've never worked so hard that you've passed out.
link |
Have you ever come close?
link |
Do you remember a time that you've come close
link |
that you've been pushed to the limits of exhaustion?
link |
You know, the question is really a good question
link |
about that pushing to you collapse.
link |
Because I don't, as a coach today, I don't think I get,
link |
if I said that to my athletes,
link |
I don't know, I could get in trouble.
link |
Because, you know, it's like.
link |
But it's understood, isn't it, by the athletes?
link |
Yeah, they understand it.
link |
But the outside might not understand it.
link |
Because it's almost like, what do you mean there?
link |
You push them to the point where they go collapse.
link |
It means they may die or something might happen to them.
link |
And, you know, that's dangerous.
link |
We can't have our kid in that type of atmosphere.
link |
But it's something that's highly unlikely
link |
that's gonna happen.
link |
But I'm gonna tell you, there's many times in a practice
link |
where I had pushed myself to all of a sudden
link |
the whistle blew or it was time to stop.
link |
And when I got up off the mat or wherever I was at
link |
and I needed water, I needed fresh air,
link |
because you're usually in a fairly small room
link |
with a lot of guys that the heat rises
link |
and it's hard to breathe.
link |
And that I can remember, and I stayed a lot of times
link |
not by the door, the far end of the room.
link |
I can remember walking from the far end of the room
link |
And I can remember, am I gonna make it the next step?
link |
Am I gonna make it the next step?
link |
I need air, I need water, I need oxygen,
link |
I need to get out of here.
link |
It didn't happen often,
link |
but I can recount four or five times in my career
link |
that I pushed myself to that level
link |
where I thought I was gonna maybe go out,
link |
but every step I was dizzy.
link |
But once I got to that door,
link |
I was able to open it and go out and grab the water
link |
and get cold water in my face.
link |
And so, no, I never really was able to do that.
link |
And I think the story is in a book
link |
where my daughter pushed a collapse, Molly.
link |
It made you proud.
link |
Oh my gosh, and she didn't win.
link |
But she pushed a collapse.
link |
Now, did she suffer because of that?
link |
Well, she didn't get to go to the next event
link |
because she had to qualify.
link |
But I think it probably helped her too,
link |
realizing because she was winning the race
link |
and she was beating people she normally never pushed,
link |
but she was at a new level that she had never been before
link |
and she only needed about five feet to finish.
link |
And it was just one of those things that
link |
I bet there was a lot of learning that she did there.
link |
And it probably made her realize that she could be better,
link |
but she had to hold up though.
link |
So you mentioned in Wrestling Life
link |
that the Brands Brothers looked up to Roy Salger,
link |
who was known for pushing the limits of physical wrestling,
link |
but not getting too rough.
link |
So how do you find the line
link |
between extreme physical wrestling,
link |
but at the same time not rough wrestling or angry wrestling?
link |
So that line between aggression, tough wrestling and anger.
link |
Well, I think anger would cause less successful wrestling.
link |
I think anger would cause you to make mistakes
link |
and actually get out of position
link |
because I think anger is kind of a loss of control.
link |
And there can be a furious type of attack,
link |
but I think if it crosses the line to anger,
link |
then you're gonna be vulnerable.
link |
And so Royce and the Brands wrestled to the edge,
link |
through the edge, but when the whistle blew,
link |
And there's people that when the whistle blows,
link |
It's like in a football game,
link |
a fight breaks out and it's after the whistles blow.
link |
Well, when the whistle blew, they backed off.
link |
So that whistle was something that in a match,
link |
that kind of gave them the boundaries.
link |
But perhaps it could be a little bit of fuel.
link |
So in Wrestling Tough, the book that you just got
link |
from Mike Chapman, the new edition,
link |
talks about Bill Cole, undefeated Northern Iowa wrestler.
link |
And how he talked about how my strength, speed
link |
and ability to think were increased tremendously
link |
by just sitting apart from the action prior to the match
link |
and getting into a state of controlled anger.
link |
So can anger, controlled, so anger could be fuel
link |
as long as it's controlled.
link |
You had that line.
link |
One side of the line, you can have an anger
link |
for performance and the other side of the line,
link |
if you go beyond that, it's not gonna be for performance.
link |
It's gonna be for not performance
link |
because you're gonna lose points.
link |
There's definitely a fine line.
link |
You're talking about Roy Selger.
link |
You're talking about Tom Brands.
link |
You're talking about Terry Brands.
link |
I mean, you got world championship titles there.
link |
You got Olympic championship title there.
link |
You got a world silver medalist in Roy Selger.
link |
And when I talked to him about the world silver medalist,
link |
he's haunted by that.
link |
Cause he was actually 20 seconds away from winning
link |
when he got beat in the end there,
link |
but that's part of the game.
link |
And I don't know whether he's okay with it or not.
link |
Cause he says every, after talking about things,
link |
he goes, I'm okay with it now.
link |
But then he keeps talking about it.
link |
So I don't really think he's okay with it.
link |
And it's hard for him to actually make amends to himself
link |
when you really don't do it.
link |
I mean, it's no matter what the situation,
link |
even with the Owings loss.
link |
Yeah, it still eats it.
link |
I mean, yeah, I'm a world champion.
link |
He's not, and he wanted to be.
link |
I'm Olympic champion.
link |
He's not, he wanted to be.
link |
One of the greatest coaches of all time.
link |
And so, it's like, why do I keep going back to it?
link |
Because you don't get over those things.
link |
So Roy really keeps going back to it,
link |
even though he says he's fine.
link |
But then he realizes he's really not fine
link |
because that's just the nature of the game.
link |
And that's why he was able to win national titles
link |
and make world teams and stuff like that.
link |
What's interesting about him,
link |
he's analyzed all the people that he's wrestled,
link |
and a lot of them have won world and Olympic championships.
link |
And he's beaten every one of them at one time or another.
link |
And he didn't get to that world championship gold
link |
And he says it because they did it.
link |
So he's showing people that I beaten those guys.
link |
But apparently he didn't beat them at the right time.
link |
And so it's still haunting.
link |
You don't get away from that stuff.
link |
I mean, it's just like anything in life that's really high.
link |
I mean, it doesn't have to be athletics.
link |
I mean, you think I'm ever gonna get over
link |
the murder of my sister?
link |
And you might not even know that.
link |
Let me pause for a second, please.
link |
You've talked about it, you've written about it.
link |
So I hope it's okay for me to say that your sister,
link |
your older sister, on May 31st, 1964,
link |
was raped and murdered by a local boy.
link |
So the echoes of pain and anger from that tragic day,
link |
do they ripple through your life still?
link |
Through your wrestling, through your coaching,
link |
through the way you, when you wake up in the morning?
link |
What is that like?
link |
It can be very emotional to me under certain circumstances.
link |
And it can be the mood I'm in.
link |
It can be maybe if I've had a Mountain Dew
link |
or maybe if I've had a Gable beer.
link |
Yeah, or maybe if you turn the country music
link |
up a little bit loud, emotions come out
link |
and everybody has them in their life.
link |
It's just so happens, what brings it out?
link |
And hopefully it's nothing that you do
link |
to the extreme point to where it brings it out.
link |
For me, it's not extreme.
link |
I don't have to have any of that really,
link |
I can get emotional.
link |
How did that change you as a man?
link |
What it did was realize
link |
that I was already pretty well developed
link |
because I was only a sophomore,
link |
15 years old in high school.
link |
And I had parents that weren't making it.
link |
And my parents are a lot older than me.
link |
And now that we're down just to me and my parents,
link |
and I'm gonna be around the house for another two years.
link |
And they had just lost a daughter
link |
that was the only other sibling.
link |
They weren't handling it.
link |
They were the ones that were suffering much more than me,
link |
even though I always look back upon one area
link |
that I wasn't good at was communication at that time,
link |
except inside the resident room,
link |
because I had been tipped off.
link |
Tipped off, what do you mean?
link |
Well, then everybody said that something to me
link |
about my sister just three weeks before that,
link |
that really wasn't normal or practical.
link |
And I said nothing to nobody.
link |
Is there a part of you that blames yourself?
link |
But I'm 15 years old and you make mistakes.
link |
And you don't really act on everything
link |
that happens in your life.
link |
But I can tell you how it affected me.
link |
And I acted a lot on anything
link |
that maybe wasn't even of that consequence.
link |
I mean, cause I had four daughters
link |
and I'm telling you when they left every time
link |
to go somewhere in a car or go out with someplace,
link |
I always said something to them.
link |
And they would always say, dad, you said that last night.
link |
What, like I love you or like be careful?
link |
I'd say like, don't be driving and drinking
link |
or don't be in a car with somebody
link |
that's of the same nature,
link |
or stay out of trouble.
link |
Don't go be somewhere where you have,
link |
I said, you know how to get out of a car
link |
if your car goes into the river.
link |
I'm always thinking ahead a little bit,
link |
just in case of something did happen.
link |
And it goes back to that walk to school
link |
with that young man that when he was talking to me
link |
and I just, I took it and I kept it inside me.
link |
And once I found out she had been murdered,
link |
it took me maybe 25 to 30 minutes.
link |
And I told my dad, I think I know who killed her.
link |
And he looked at me and he just like,
link |
he slapped me actually.
link |
He pushed me against the car.
link |
He didn't slap me.
link |
He pushed me against the car.
link |
She was the one that slapped me around a little bit.
link |
But my dad, he pushed me against the car and go,
link |
what do you mean you might know something about this?
link |
I said, dad, I don't for sure,
link |
but, and I would probably all crying,
link |
but, and I don't, I doubt if I was crying yet.
link |
I've probably cried a lot of tears since,
link |
but, you know, I just said,
link |
hey, I was walking to school with this neighbor
link |
and I never had walked to school with him before.
link |
And he was kind of a troubled kid.
link |
And he said something about Diane and it wasn't good,
link |
but I didn't, he goes, why didn't you say something?
link |
I said, daddy, I just boy talk, you know?
link |
So, you know, and so he hugged me, he hugged me,
link |
he hugged me and, you know, it was one of these things
link |
that it's definitely made me a lot of who I am
link |
because there's been a lot of choices and I don't,
link |
I took the word choice out of my life
link |
and I just like to say, okay, do the right thing,
link |
do the thing that you should do.
link |
And so I don't really, it's like,
link |
are you gonna do this or this?
link |
Well, what do you mean?
link |
Which one's better?
link |
Well, then I'm, so I don't have that choice.
link |
Just give me the right way to go.
link |
And so not that I've been perfect by any means,
link |
but it's made a big difference in my life
link |
on how I handle my life.
link |
It's probably given me the opportunity
link |
to be married for 44 years.
link |
It's just given me opportunities to be better in my life.
link |
And I, you know, I wanna thank my sister for that,
link |
you know, and I think my family was ready to make a split
link |
because of that incident, they're blaming each other.
link |
And I think that I was able to help, but more than that,
link |
they really liked each other,
link |
but they didn't really know it at the time
link |
until I got out of the house.
link |
Two years later, it probably was going on
link |
for a couple of years until I moved on and went to college.
link |
Then they found out they really liked each other
link |
when they were alone and it worked out pretty good.
link |
But I think them being able to follow me,
link |
not just through college and the Olympics and worlds,
link |
So it's the same, the same success and factor,
link |
you know, the excitement and all those things
link |
gave them a real purpose.
link |
And it gave my four daughters, it gave my wife,
link |
you know, a real purpose to be able to be close
link |
to all these champions and championships.
link |
And now it's like, there's a family of 22
link |
and they're all interested in what we're interested in.
link |
And it's going good, knock on wood.
link |
But you know, it's something that when all of a sudden
link |
you got too much time in your hands
link |
and you're not doing and accomplishing much
link |
that things probably, you know, get off track.
link |
What do you think is the role of family in wrestling?
link |
Can a man do it alone?
link |
And if not, where's family most important?
link |
You know, you can do it alone, but why would you want to?
link |
I think the chances of doing it alone
link |
are much less than the chances of doing it together.
link |
I know they say, don't bring your profession home sometimes.
link |
They say that, I never got away from my profession.
link |
And you know, sometimes I, it's like my house right here.
link |
So when I'm moving home and I'm not going to have an office
link |
because I'm not going to coach anymore
link |
or I'm not going to be an assistant athletic director
link |
for a while, that you got to do something
link |
that gives you a little bit of a break.
link |
Not you necessarily, maybe the person you're living with.
link |
And so I don't know if you looked outside there,
link |
I got a cabin right out in my backyard.
link |
You probably can't see it right there, but.
link |
What's in the cabin?
link |
That's my house away from my house.
link |
It's only 30 feet from my house and it's my office
link |
and it's my workout room.
link |
I got a sauna there, it's a bed upstairs if I need it.
link |
If I ever get too close and she says,
link |
hey, why don't you go sleep in the other house?
link |
But you know, it kicks me out of the bed, but.
link |
It's never happened.
link |
But I do spend a lot of time out there.
link |
And it's, you know, you got to have a little distance
link |
sometimes and you got to know your role.
link |
And so all of a sudden when you're a guy that's been gone
link |
your whole life from eight o clock in the morning
link |
until close to seven, three or eight o clock at night.
link |
So 11, 12 hours a day, then all of a sudden
link |
you're not gone as much, even though you still work.
link |
She's trying to slow me down now.
link |
I'm doing not so much like here, what we're doing right now,
link |
but it's when I get in the car and drive somewhere
link |
or fly somewhere, you know, like just last night
link |
I just went to bed and I hadn't told her
link |
that this guy called me and he wants me to speak
link |
for a bit, want to build another, wrestling wants
link |
to start another wrestlers and business networking out
link |
in Delaware because we don't have any colleges
link |
in wrestling in Delaware.
link |
And so I said, well, you know, I'm glad to do that
link |
because that's my life, you know?
link |
So, but then all of a sudden I didn't say anything
link |
to my wife until all of a sudden this morning.
link |
And I told her that I might go on the Friday
link |
the 21st of December.
link |
Well, I said, that's not Christmas.
link |
She goes, we're celebrating Christmas that weekend early
link |
because a lot of the family can't be here
link |
except for that weekend.
link |
And I said, oh, well, that's not gonna work.
link |
But I kind of didn't say anything to her at first.
link |
And then, well, I'll tell you,
link |
she started getting a little emotional.
link |
And if I want to stay married for another year, 45 years,
link |
then I better tell those people that I got family
link |
obligations because that depends what's most important.
link |
I love wrestling and I want to start another,
link |
start another wrestlers and business network.
link |
But there's more than one Dan Gable out there.
link |
Well, maybe not, but there's a lot of people
link |
that are maybe even closer and they got big names.
link |
I mean, we're doing pretty well right now.
link |
I mean, we got first two years ago
link |
and we got second this year.
link |
And then we got the women's freestyles
link |
doing good in wrestling.
link |
We got to work a little bit on our Greco yet,
link |
but they are working on it.
link |
But our men's freestyle team right now are excellent.
link |
And the key for them is to get them all on the same page
link |
instead of just have new highlights.
link |
And by that, I'm saying, you look and see who won this year.
link |
Well, the three guys that have never won before
link |
We had three world champions.
link |
Our two past world champions didn't win this year.
link |
I mean, they did okay, they got medals.
link |
Oh, that's right, he got bronze, yeah.
link |
And Sajilov got, I mean, Snyder got second.
link |
So those two are our main guys.
link |
So the three new guys that came through
link |
were guys that hadn't won world gold.
link |
In fact, two of them have never made a world team before.
link |
And so we have three world champions this year,
link |
but we needed all five of them to come through
link |
to win the championships.
link |
And so the key really is getting them all to do the same
link |
at the same time, year in and year out,
link |
and not just based on, okay, Borrows got beat this year,
link |
so he'll win next year.
link |
It's gotta be every year if you're capable of doing that.
link |
And that's what the coaching staff has to do.
link |
What's kind of funny that I do have a lot of influence
link |
actually on the coaching staffs right now at the USA level
link |
because the women's freestyle guy is Terry Steiner.
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And he wrestled for me, he was a national champion.
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He's got a twin brother that's at Fresno State.
link |
And then Billy Zaddik is the freestyle coach
link |
and he wrestled for the Hawkeyes back in the early days.
link |
And he was the national champion.
link |
So we've got a lot of former Gable influence on there,
link |
You got deep roots in there.
link |
In 2013, the International Olympic Committee, IOC,
link |
voted wrestling out of the Olympics.
link |
So a lot of folks know about this,
link |
the absurdity of it and so on.
link |
But in a big picture, you can step back now,
link |
it's five years later.
link |
What did you learn from that experience?
link |
Well, first of all, did it surprise me?
link |
But did it really surprise me?
link |
You gotta have people running the organization
link |
that are top notch.
link |
If you take anything for granted
link |
and you're not the person of authority,
link |
somebody can kick you out.
link |
And even though we had a lot of authority
link |
because we're wrestling,
link |
we're one of the first sports in the Olympics ever,
link |
and that we think that we're in 180 some countries
link |
and some of the number one countries in the world
link |
that are politically strong have the sport,
link |
we thought we were okay.
link |
But then you gotta look and see who's running the IOC.
link |
The IOC, the International Olympic Committee.
link |
And then you gotta see that in wrestling,
link |
we don't have anybody in there.
link |
I mean, that shocked me.
link |
We've never had anybody on the IOC from wrestling.
link |
Because we didn't have to, but yes, that's wrong.
link |
And if you don't have somebody looking out for you
link |
right within the structure,
link |
then it's pretty easy for people to turn their head.
link |
But all it took was the statement,
link |
you guys are kicked out of the Olympics.
link |
You guys are done.
link |
Everybody came together.
link |
Well, yeah, I mean, it's the first time in history
link |
that probably all this competitive people
link |
that were working for their own agenda
link |
turned that agenda to the sport.
link |
So that made a big difference and we got a lot done.
link |
In fact, in America, there was several people
link |
that were really out there that we didn't know about
link |
until this point in time.
link |
And when they came aboard, now they're still aboard.
link |
That doesn't mean we're doing everything perfect
link |
because just because we got voted back in
link |
before we even got kicked out really,
link |
that doesn't mean we're by any means safe.
link |
We have to do some of the things that I'm talking about
link |
or some of the things that we didn't do before.
link |
We can't fall right back into the same mess.
link |
And so our leadership got changed and it's better,
link |
but it's gotta stay better.
link |
But there are things that we could still be doing
link |
to make sure that we don't have situations like this happen.
link |
I'll tell you, when I first learned about it,
link |
I was like, I broke down and wept again.
link |
It's like every once in a while,
link |
I'll break down and cry about my sister
link |
or I'll break down, I don't know if I cry
link |
about losing the owings, but I probably get more determined.
link |
But that's kind of, you have to go back
link |
and think about those moments when you heard,
link |
when I heard that moment and it just overcame me.
link |
It was like four o clock, 4.30 in the morning
link |
when I heard about it.
link |
And my wife had been up looking at the internet
link |
and she woke me up and I thought she was joking,
link |
but I jumped out of bed really quick when she said that.
link |
I knew she was serious.
link |
And I started making phone calls right then
link |
to find out if it was true.
link |
And when I found out it was true,
link |
it was just like devastating.
link |
And it was one of these things that it's a nightmare,
link |
and, but you don't let it happen again.
link |
You keep getting stronger.
link |
Yeah, and if people haven't read,
link |
they should read The Loss of Dan Gable
link |
by Ray Thompson, the ESPN article.
link |
That kind of, in this very beautiful poetic way,
link |
ties together all the losses of Dan Gable,
link |
the losing your sister, losing to Larry Owens,
link |
losing wrestling from the Olympics,
link |
all of these tragedies of various forms.
link |
So that's, well, the IOC, there's politics,
link |
and you're sort of being very pragmatic.
link |
But stepping back, wrestling is one of the oldest forms
link |
of combat, period.
link |
Dating back, there's cave drawings 15,000 years ago.
link |
And if you look at the ancient Olympics,
link |
the Greek Olympics, 2,700 years ago,
link |
did you ever, when you wrestled or coached,
link |
do you now see wrestling in this way,
link |
freestyle and folk style wrestling,
link |
the purity of sort of two human beings locked in combat,
link |
the roots of that as just human beings,
link |
this fair struggle between two men or two women?
link |
I don't think I ever looked at it
link |
as anything but just a combat.
link |
And I think there's times that have made me
link |
figure out how to make that combat better.
link |
There's little markers or little points in time in your life
link |
that make you wonder, or I should say determined,
link |
to be able to get more out of yourself
link |
and to be able to take it to a new level.
link |
And I don't think people can actually feel that way
link |
unless you've actually had a lot of accomplishments
link |
I think there's anything out there.
link |
I mean, no matter what sport
link |
or breaking the four minute mile,
link |
I mean, when you broke that, when they broke that,
link |
Roger Bannister broke that four minute mile,
link |
I can't imagine him breaking it
link |
from his best time being 4.30.
link |
It's one of these things that along the line
link |
that he did had some close calls
link |
or he had some coaching that was giving him
link |
the opportunity to become a little better.
link |
But I think because he was doing well
link |
and being very successful, that the opportunity came.
link |
And so it's for me, it's like the same thing.
link |
I had so much success
link |
and so many practices that went well
link |
and so much goodness out of this sport
link |
that it gave me the opportunity to really look more finite
link |
and look more how I can even make it better.
link |
And so it's like, if you look at my library upstairs,
link |
I got a library upstairs
link |
and there's a lot of books up there from the family.
link |
But if you look at the Gable books up there,
link |
I got a lot of Russian technique books.
link |
I can't read the book, but I can see the diagrams
link |
and I can see the figures.
link |
They don't really show it in pictures.
link |
They do it in drawings.
link |
And so it was like when I was trying to beat the best
link |
that has labeled the best
link |
because they win the world championships every year
link |
since they've been just about involved.
link |
And I don't think they got started involved
link |
till like the fifties, but it's something,
link |
you study the best who's out there,
link |
but then you don't focus so much on the best
link |
that you can't beat the best.
link |
You learn from them,
link |
but there's something that they don't have
link |
that you can have.
link |
Toughness to technique, to the art, to the science.
link |
Yeah, all that stuff.
link |
And that's why I even talking to you
link |
and you're sitting over there and you love MIT
link |
and you're bragging about it over Harvard.
link |
In your eyes and that's great.
link |
And it might be, but it's the same type of thing
link |
that there's something that you're probably stealing
link |
from Harvard, but you won't give them credit.
link |
Well, Dan, in the interest of time,
link |
I've read that you're pretty serious.
link |
You're pretty seriously into fishing.
link |
So what's the biggest fish you ever caught?
link |
What are we talking about here?
link |
What are we talking about?
link |
No, I don't think I've ever caught a big ocean fish.
link |
I'm not, I'm a river lake fisherman.
link |
I have fish in the...
link |
No, probably Northern.
link |
I probably caught a Northern that weighed 20 some pounds.
link |
The fish I like to catch is walleyes.
link |
And the reason why I like to catch them
link |
cause they're really good eating fish.
link |
And the best eating fish are not the real big ones.
link |
It's kind of interesting.
link |
I got people hunting deer right on my land
link |
and they're looking for the big bucks,
link |
but they're not the best eaters if you want to eat,
link |
but they're the best trophy.
link |
So I do have a couple of trophy walleyes on the wall,
link |
but most of the time I throw the big ones back
link |
and put them back in there.
link |
I don't know if you know there's a book by Hemingway
link |
called Old Man in the Sea.
link |
Ernest Hemingway, yeah.
link |
And there's an old man that basically
link |
catches an 18 footer, but it can't pull it in,
link |
doesn't have the strength.
link |
So they together spend while the sharks eat away at it.
link |
I mean, this is very powerful story.
link |
I think one of the Nobel Prize,
link |
but he says, it's better to be lucky.
link |
The old man says, it's better to be lucky,
link |
but I would rather be exact that way
link |
when luck comes, you're ready.
link |
So let me ask, what do you think about luck?
link |
Do you believe in free will that we have actions
link |
that control the direction, destination of our life,
link |
or does luck and some other outside forces
link |
really land you where you end up?
link |
For me, I'm not about luck,
link |
but I do think luck is involved.
link |
But I think it's mostly created,
link |
just how lucky you are through preparations.
link |
And things have happened in my life forever,
link |
and a lot of good things.
link |
And a lot of people could say,
link |
hey, you've been pretty lucky to win all these awards.
link |
I don't know, if you analyze my life,
link |
I don't think it was involved with luck.
link |
I think it was more involved with preparation.
link |
And again, science, had you been smarter,
link |
had you understood that you could do some things
link |
and be just as lucky, that'd be great.
link |
But I'm only as smart as today.
link |
So when I was training in my life,
link |
and me even training people in my life,
link |
as of that moment, that's how lucky I am
link |
to be able to have whatever is available to me.
link |
And that's what, you call that a lot of science.
link |
So for me, I think that, like right now, if I look back,
link |
I do a lot of things different,
link |
just because things are proven differently.
link |
Like I'd give people water during practice, and I did.
link |
And I would let them change their wrestling shoes
link |
into running shoes to run sprints on the concrete.
link |
Or I would actually, maybe I've had a guy climb 12 ropes
link |
after practice, one after another.
link |
And then maybe the next day I'd do it again.
link |
Ah, I might not make him do it the next day.
link |
I might let him recover a little bit more.
link |
And you gotta learn, keep adding to your philosophy.
link |
And your philosophy may have been great at that time,
link |
but it's at that time.
link |
And what is really important is where you at
link |
with this time, today.
link |
And so there's better ways to do things.
link |
Now, if you ever take attitude out of it,
link |
and just depend on total science,
link |
then you're not gonna be as,
link |
as you know, I think as I listened to a couple people
link |
that are really pretty famous people.
link |
One of them was John Irving.
link |
And he told me, he says,
link |
you think I really learned how to be a great writer
link |
in writing school?
link |
He said, yeah, I learned a lot there.
link |
But really what gave me the ability to stay focused,
link |
to work extra hours, to be more disciplined,
link |
was wrestling practices.
link |
That's right, he was a wrestler, yeah.
link |
Yeah, he goes, I go back to that.
link |
That's what gave me that chance.
link |
And there's a guy in Iowa, that guy named Norman Borlaug.
link |
He learned, he invented a process
link |
to feed the underprivileged countries of the world.
link |
And he was a wrestler, and he said the same thing.
link |
And he worked extremely hard.
link |
And he said, I give a lot of credit
link |
to the sport of wrestling.
link |
And even though I'm known for this,
link |
and I got a statue in Washington, DC,
link |
because I saved a billion lives plus,
link |
I'm gonna give wrestling a lot of credit.
link |
So I think some of these MMA stars
link |
and some of these guys that maybe weren't wrestlers,
link |
that had to wrestle, had to fight wrestling guys and stuff,
link |
missed a little bit there.
link |
But I think the ones that did have wrestling
link |
probably have a really good chance
link |
and can adapt to the other ones.
link |
But I think every martial art or every activity is good,
link |
and you probably can't skip any.
link |
But I don't think they're ever gonna overlook
link |
and say that wrestling's not valuable, because it is.
link |
However, that doesn't mean you're gonna make it.
link |
You still gotta take the values and apply it,
link |
whatever area you're gonna be in.
link |
And some people forget that.
link |
Some people can't get over the highness
link |
of getting your arm raised in a wrestling match.
link |
And you know what?
link |
What's even greater than me getting my arm raised
link |
is that if I'm a coach or if I belong with you,
link |
that you get your arm raised.
link |
And even if you don't get your arm raised,
link |
it's what you walk away with
link |
and how you learn to handle that as well.
link |
Because there's gonna be some losses,
link |
but you don't want many.
link |
Because you don't wanna get used to losing,
link |
I can tell you that.
link |
So it's the hunger for the win.
link |
It's the brotherhood, the sisterhood of the wrestling room.
link |
And it's hard work and science
link |
that's gonna beat luck at the end of the day.
link |
Absolutely, that luck, I like luck,
link |
but I think it's created by the opportunity that...
link |
You make your luck.
link |
You make your luck, yeah.
link |
Dan, it was a huge honor.
link |
Thank you for welcoming me into your home
link |
and for having this conversation.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dan Gable.
link |
And thank you to our sponsors, Trio Labs,
link |
a machine learning company, ExpressVPN,
link |
Grammarly writing helper tool,
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and SimpliSafe Home Security.
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So the choice is artificial intelligence,
link |
privacy, grammar, or safety.
link |
Choose wisely, my friends.
link |
And if you wish, click the sponsor links below
link |
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
link |
And now, let me leave you with some words from Dan Gable.
link |
The first period is won by the best technician.
link |
The second period is won by the kid in the best shape.
link |
And the third period is won by the kid
link |
with the biggest heart.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.