Bio - Dan Gable - About Dan Gable

The champion
Author: Edward W Rearick Jim Doran filmmaker.
University, Department of Speech/Telecommunicative Arts.
Subjects: Dan Gable, Wrestlers -- Iowa State University
Description:
Profiles Dan Gable's high school and collegiate wrestling career. Includes comments by Dan Gable, his parents, and coaches. Contains film footage of his many wrestling matches including his one loss in the NCAA finals of his senior year.
Publisher: Special Collections Department, Iowa State University Library
Creation Date: c1971
Format: 16mm
Notes:
Transfer from original 16mm A and B roll and 1/4" magtrack
Music, Gary White, Bruce Eberle ; faculty advisor, R.H. Kraemer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIF1uYh9SIE

Images
1. Dan Gable went undefeated as a high schooler, lost just one match in college and did not allow a point in winning a gold medal at the Munich 1972 Olympic Games.
2. Dan Gable 'Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts'
3. Dan Gable - 1972 Olympics Team USA
4. Dan Gable 'Talent is everywhere, winning attitude is not.'
5. Danny Mack 'Dan' Gable with jar of pickles at lectern


Biographies:
1. chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-07-20 [login to see] -story.html
2. widerightnattylite.com/2012/4/20/2960838/dan-gable-leaves-wife-for-a-jar-of-pickles]

Background from {[https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-07-20 [login to see] -story.html]}
It was a car ride forced by...
Michael Hirsley, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

It was a car ride forced by tragedy. Two parents and their teenage son were returning hastily from a getaway trip, knowing the family member they had left behind had been raped and murdered.
As the father was driving home, the 15-year-old son suddenly blurted that there might be a clue to his older sister's murder in something an older neighborhood youth had told him about her. The father's gloom burst into anger. He stopped, pulled his son out, pushed him against the car, and shouted "What do you mean?" as he slapped him.
It turned out the son's instinct was correct. The disturbed neighbor who once had said he wanted to be intimate with the boy's sister was arrested and convicted of her murder.
The son went beyond understanding and forgiving his father's rage. He vowed to move into his sister's room to dissuade his parents from moving from their home, where their daughter's bloody body was found, and to keep his parents together despite fits of despair that threatened the marriage and family structure.
He focused on a naive goal: "I needed to give them enough entertainment that they didn't have to look other places."
"Gable." If a documentary with that one-word title showed up in most places under most circumstances, most people would associate it with legendary Hollywood icon Clark Gable.
But the feature-length documentary titled "Gable" has shown up this month in Iowa City, as a completed project shot on videotape and a tight budget by independent filmmakers with Shadow Bird Productions and the University of Iowa Video Center, winner of national awards primarily for videos on health and family issues. This video is a departure, but it begins with a family crisis. It tells what happened to that 15-year-old whose world teetered on the verge of ruin when his 19-year-old sister, Diane Gable, was murdered in 1964.
This documentary is about legendary Iowa wrestling icon Dan Gable. He won an Olympic gold medal, compiled a 181-1 high school record in Waterloo, Iowa, and at Iowa State University, then coached the University of Iowa to wrestling dominance with 15 national championships, including nine in a row from 1978 to 1986.
Gable retired after the 1997 season, during which the documentary was shot.
Wrestling has been Dan Gable's life. At 15, he already had wrestled for eight years, beginning when his father, real estate salesman Mack Gable, put him in YMCA competitions. Dan focused and honed his skills with the single-minded zeal consistent with having vowed to be his parents' reliable entertainer . . . and knowing only one way to do that.
He became so overwhelmingly dominant his talent focused his parents' attention . . . along with that of an ever-growing legion of followers, from wrestling fans to sports fans to celebrity watchers.
As one might expect, many Iowans still recognize and greet the trim, balding 50-year-old who now coaches a smaller number of top wrestlers as one of three U.S. Olympic coaches. When he helped Olympic hopeful Mark Ironside, a two-time national champion on Gable's Iowa teams, give a wrestling clinic last week at Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids, those seeking Gable's autograph ranged from 1st graders to high schoolers to parents.
Unexpectedly, his dedication and success in wrestling has made him a hero transcending his sport and his state. Comedian Al Franken, author John Irving and actor Tom Cruise, all of whom wrestled as amateurs, count themselves among Gable's admirers.
Irving, who earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at Iowa and uses wrestling imagery in his novels, worked out with the Iowa team and wrestled with Gable. In a subsequent magazine piece, he wrote in praise of being thrashed by his idol: "When Dan Gable lays his hands on you, you are in touch with grace."
Franken and Irving agreed to be interviewed by the documentary filmmakers, who worked on the project from 1997 until this year. Cruise, who was working on "Eyes Wide Shut," the just-released film, might yet appear in the documentary.
HBO was impressed with the work sufficiently to purchase broadcast rights, intending to premiere it on its Signature network in November after changing the title to "Freestyle: The Victories of Dan Gable."
David Gould, who co-produced the documentary with Daniel Lind of the Iowa Video Center, said, "I felt we needed to do this story of an extraordinary person, right in our midst, before all those Gable stories are lost.
"We want to take his story beyond wrestling, beyond athletics. . . . This is a mainstream human-interest story. Whether you're an athlete, an accountant or a dentist, Gable's story makes you question how hard you're working toward your goals."
Director Kevin Kelley said he felt how Gable's intensity could intimidate when they first met to discuss the project: "He said, `If you're going to shoot this, it better be great.' "
The video team became partners with the wrestling team, as Gable allowed the crew ever-increasing access during the 1997 season--even to the hospital where he went for hip-replacement surgery.
Editor Bryan Less, whose filming included chasing wrestlers up stairs during their exhausting climbing exercises, said the crew decided early that the video did not need a narrator.
The story line is carried in scenes such as Gable's instructions to his team; and, after he won his Olympic gold medal at the 1972 Munich Games, a strange interview in which he was still so focused on the sport that he didn't immediately recognize that reporters' questions about the "atmosphere" meant the deadly terrorists who disrupted the Games.
"His work ethic is what makes him tick," Less said. "He happened to pick wrestling, but you can't imagine anyone being that focused in any walk of life."
But those who think his intensity made him the most successful wrestling coach "are wrong," Gould said. "The reason Gable always won was because his guys looked over and saw a coach who had been with them every step of the way. I never saw him get on a kid who lost but gave his all."
Gable still trains for an hour every day, but says he has cut down his sit-ups, push-ups, rope jumping and bike riding and has increased his time in the whirlpool and sauna.
Nonetheless, Kelley still was amazed at Gable's athleticism. He did repetitions of chin-ups on a horizontal bar for a scene in the documentary.
"Finally, we went from long-range shots to close-ups, just showing his head coming above the bar," Kelley recalled. "I realized he didn't actually have to keep doing chin-ups for that, so I asked, `Dan, would you like to just stand on a box?' "
Silly question, Kelly quickly realized.
"He just said, `No,' " Kelly recalled.
The documentary includes historical footage of the gold medal-deciding match that completed Gable's incredible Olympic run in which he held every opponent scoreless and the lone defeat on his 181-1 high school and college record, a 13-11 loss to Larry Owings of the University of Washington in 1970. It was Gable's last collegiate match. Owings, whose career never again rose to that level, lost to Gable two years later in the Olympic trials.
When the documentary crew interviewed Owings, who is now on the administrative staff at an Oregon school, the filmmakers were surprised to see no wrestling memorabilia in his home.
"When we asked, he brought down the national championship trophy he won by beating Dan Gable in the most stunning upset in college wrestling," Gould said. "It was covered with cobwebs."
- - -
Dan Gable's home on a large wooded lot in Iowa City is filled with trophies and posters, with his Olympic gold medal a centerpiece. He says his wife, Kathy, is the one who has loaded showcases and walls with wrestling memorabilia.
In a nearby cabin he has furnished as an office, his choice of displays include photographs of his hero, Mickey Mantle.
Gable is pleased with the documentary. Some friends in wrestling circles think it doesn't show enough of the sport and he admits he agreed at first.
"It took me a while to understand it, because I'm narrow-minded," he said. "But this is about more than wrestling and a sports point of view. Because it is, I hope it can help promote wrestling to a wider audience."
And promoting wrestling is his ultimate motive in most of what he does. He is a critic of Title IX because he believes it is funding women's sports at the expense of college sports such as his.
"Title IX is creating (sex) discrimination against male wrestlers," he said. "In 10 years, you'll need another rule to correct the damages of Title IX."
He says that as the father of four--all daughters.
Producer Gould says he told Gable when the documentary project began that it would not be a puff piece. Lengthy footage of the Owings match confirms that. And only a dramatic comeback salvaged the 1997 season that would be the documentary's centerpiece regardless of how the team did or whether Gable retired when it was over.
It was a tough season, complete with the hip surgery that left Gable on crutches for the final weeks. Oklahoma State was a solid favorite to win the NCAA championship.
But the tournament was on the Cedar Falls campus of Northern Iowa, where a packed house of screaming fans created almost a home-arena atmosphere for Gable's team. The Hawkeyes scored an NCAA-record 170 points, crowned five individual national champions and won their 17th national title.
It did more than give the documentary a fitting climax that could not have been better if scripted. Gable thinks it might have saved his life.
"If they had not won that championship, I don't know if I could have stepped down, although I'd pretty much said I would early in the season," he said. "And if I hadn't, I might not be talking to you today."
Citing the job's stress, his health problems and his perfectionist attitude, he said, "Yes, I made the right decision. I was going to go downhill."
Failure gnaws at him, even the slight imperfection of not winning a record 10th consecutive national championship and of falling one victory short of a perfect career record as a wrestler. He did lose several times in the freestyle competition that he ultimately perfected at the 1972 Olympics. It is a style different from U.S. high school and college wrestling and it is not counted in his 181-1 record.
He has had surgery to replace both hips and is active again. He demonstrated that vividly, along with a series of wrestling holds and escapes, at the Cedar Rapids clinic. He has put his father in a nursing home. He has found solace over the recent death of his mother, Kate, and the childhood murder of his sister.
He believes his mother would agree with his decision to step down from coaching because she knew how stressful it was: "She never watched me wrestle matside. She always watched through windows, doors, from far away."
And when he won his gold medal, and stood on the podium, "I could vividly see my sister, almost like a ghost that was real," he said.
It was a good apparition, he explained. "She had a big grin, one of congratulations."

Background from {[ https://www.widerightnattylite.com/2012/4/20/2960838/dan-gable-leaves-wife-for-a-jar-of-pickles]}
Dan Gable Leaves Wife For a Jar of Pickles
By I am a Cyentist Apr 20, 2012, 3:30pm CDT
When bandages for an injured knee became difficult for Gable to obtain as he prepared for the 1972 Olympics, who outside of the cloak-and-dagger group knew that five dozen rolls valued at $100 would turn into one of the best investments in Hawkeye history?
"All I know is I couldn't get a roll of tape (at Iowa State)... It was like a dogfight to get a roll of tape. Then all of a sudden there was a case." - Andy Hamilton, Press-Citizen
In a stunning development Friday morning, Dan Gable announced that he was leaving his wife of 28 years over a disagreement about groceries. The former Iowa State and Iowa wrestler/coach indicated that he was no longer able to reconcile his differences with his wife Kathy over her refusal to buy pickles.

"Look, all I want in my life is a nice pickle spear to go along with my sandwich at lunch," Gable stated today. "Is picking up a case of kosher dills when you're at the store that much to ask? I don't think so, and I let Kathy know it. But she always brought up something about being "allergic" or whatever, I don't know. I wasn't really listening."

Gable's announcement is the latest in a string of high-profile defections for the legendary coach. Gable famously left his alma mater in 1972 to join the Iowa Hawkeye coaching staff after he couldn't, in his words, "get a roll of tape" at Iowa State. More recently, Gable switched dentists after being unable to get the latest issue of Newsweek in the waiting room; he left his recently-purchased car on the side of the road when he couldn't find a good song on the radio; and fled from a Bennigan's parking lot when the parking spot next to the door wasn't available.

Gable clarified these moves further, saying "I'm a guy who knows what he needs in life; be it a roll of athletic tape from a school, a jar of pickles from my wife or my insistence that none of my daughters look me directly in the eye. If I can't get what I need from a place or a person, I'm moving on. It's how I lead my life, and what I try to teach my children. "All or nothing," that's my motto. I tell my kids that all the time. That, and "Eyes on the floor, girls."

When pressed on why he didn't simply ask for more athletic tape and try to make the situation work at Iowa State, Gable put his fingers in his ears and closed his eyes. Efforts to question Gable further were met with a nonsensical song apparently made up on the spot, which included the lyrics, "I'm not listening to you, I'm not listening to you, a la la la la."

Dan Gable is expected to try and remarry quickly, reportedly to the stork mascot of the Vlasic Pickle Company. When it was pointed out that Vlasic's mascot was a fictional cartoon bird and unsuitable for marriage to a human man, Gable quickly left the press conference he had called and ducked out the side entrance of the building."

FYI SSG (Join to see) Capt Rich BuckleyCW4 G.L. SmithSPC Nancy GreeneSSG Franklin Briant1stsgt Glenn Brackin Sgt Kelli Mays SGT Gregory Lawritson SGM Gerald FifeSFC (Join to see)Maj Wayne CristSGM Bill FrazerMSG Andrew WhitePO3 Phyllis Maynard CSM (Join to see) CPL Dave Hoover SPC Russ Bolton SP5 Dennis Loberger SFC William Farrell MSG Felipe De Leon Brown

I was a junior high wrestler at the time. He was about the most motivated individual ever. It is a shame he lost his very last match, but it made him who he was.

SGT (Join to see) I was sitting on B-52 alert for those olympics.