Rulon Gardner

Rulon Gardner grew up on a dairy farm in Afton, Wyoming, the youngest of nine, hauling hay and milk cans before school. He was a big, slow child with a learning disability who was teased about his weight, and wrestling was the sport where his size stopped being a joke. He was good, not great, through college and his early international career, and a wrestler most people in his sport could not have picked out of a line-up.

At the Sydney Olympics in 2000 he reached the super-heavyweight Greco-Roman final against Aleksandr Karelin of Russia, who had not lost a match in 13 years and had not conceded a point in six. Gardner did not try anything clever. He held on, refused to be lifted, and won one point to nil when Karelin briefly broke his grip. It was called the Miracle on the Mat.

In 2002 he got lost on a snowmobile in the Wyoming mountains and spent a night in temperatures far below freezing before he was found. Frostbite cost him a toe, and doctors were unsure he would wrestle again. He did, and won bronze in Athens in 2004, leaving his shoes on the mat in the traditional sign of retirement.

He later survived a plane crash into a freezing lake, lost most of his money, and became badly overweight before losing much of it publicly. He teaches and coaches in Utah.