Gardner leaves it on mat

ATHENS — American wrestling’s most famous figure of brute strength had just gut-wrenched a towering Iranian. He had slammed him to the ground. He had shoved him and thrown him and out-fought him for the bronze medal.

Then Rulon Gardner turned off the ferocity. He plopped his 264-pound body on the mat, took off his shoes and placed them in the center circle. He stood for a moment on the edge of the platform. He was wearing white socks, and he was crying.

Gardner stepped out of the ring for the last time. His shoes stayed on the mat. It’s a tradition in wrestling when an athlete retires.

“It meant that I left everything on the mat as a wrestler,” Gardner said. “You start putting your shoes on as a four- or five-year-old kid. I took them off as a 33-year-old kid.”

And with that simple gesture, the career that had made him a kind of folk hero was over.

There was hardly a dry eye in the Ano Liossia hall. Gardner, the thoughtful, humble heavyweight who wouldn’t hurt a fly outside the ring, had won his final match 3-0 over Iran’s Sajad Barzi.

“Even though it’s a bronze, I have no regrets,” said Gardner, who lost a semifinal earlier in the day that would have put him in the gold medal match.

Gardner’s coach, Steve Fraser, was also emotional.

“I’m happy and sad because I’m going to miss him,” he said. “I told him he’d overcome a ton of adversity and this was just one more step. It was a tough match because of the pressure. There’s a big difference between no medal and a bronze and between retiring with a victory as opposed to a loss.”

The 6-1 Gardner beat the 6-5 Iranian by breaking a clinch in overtime.

Gardner, the youngest of nine kids who grew up on a dairy farm in Afton, Wyo., was a relatively unknown Greco-Roman wrestler when he became one of the underdog stars of the Sydney Olympics. In the gold medal match, he defeated Russian Alexander Karelin, nicknamed “The Experiment” and known for his reverse body lift, a move so harrowing that some opponents surrendered before they got thrown. Gardner broke Karelin’s 13-year unbeaten streak with a 1-0 upset.

Gardner’s legend grew when he survived a snowmobiling accident three years ago. He was stranded overnight in the freezing wilderness and suffered frostbite to his toes, one of which had to be amputated.

Gardner made a comeback in wrestling, even though the missing toe and the lack of feeling in a couple others hampered his sense of balance in the upper-body discipline of the sport.

“My feet did affect me in the semifinal,” Gardner said. “I don’t sense every minute detail that my toes are telling me. He set me up for a little trick step and pop.”

Asked why he bothered with the comeback after achieving the ultimate in his sport by beating Karelin in 2000, Gardner explained that his goal had been to wrestle on the national team for eight years and two Olympics.

Prior to this year’s Olympic trials, Gardner broke his wrist in a basketball game fall. He wrestled with pins in the bones.

Fraser said his favorite Gardner memory was the time he challenged him to carry a 215-pound teammate one mile from an arena in Poland to the team’s hotel. Fraser lost $150 on the bet.

What does Gardner plan to do now?

“He’ll probably buy a farm and slop some pigs, or whatever you do on a farm,” Fraser said.

Gardner said he and his new wife will settle in Wellsville, Utah, where he’d like to promote physical education for kids and get out of the spotlight.

“You don’t really pitch yourself as a celebrity when you’re down on the mat sweating and getting battered,” he said. “Today I was a wrestler. Tomorrow a husband. A good one, I hope.”