Admire Gardner, but don’t go camping with him

Here are some dangerous risks to avoid, if at all possible.

Sticking your face in a fan.

Dropping a car battery on your foot.

Going anywhere and doing anything with Rulon Gardner.

Clearly, the last one would be the most hazardous. Rulon Gardner should come with his own FDA warning label.

You remember Gardner. The round mound of pluck who changed his life forever in nine minutes in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, beating Alexander Karelin for the Greco-Roman wrestling gold medal. It was a moment that stirred adulation and applause from his fellow Americans, most of whom thought Greco-Roman was a salad dressing.

But Karelin wasn’t just a man. He was his own Russian army division. Hadn’t lost a match in 13 years.

Surely that night used up enough good karma to last Gardner a lifetime. Now we know differently. In 2000, the gods of heavyweight wrestlers were just getting their fate wet with this guy. Taking care of Rulon Gardner would turn into a full-time job.

Maybe you heard the latest news. Gardner, 35, and two buddies were in a small plane that did a swan dive into a remote area near the Utah-Arizona border. To get rescued, they had to swim for an hour in 44-degree water. Then spend the night outdoors. Sounds as if Gardner is lucky he didn’t end up in the frozen food section, next to the peas and corn.

That was Good Hope Bay, by the way. Not to be confused with the Salt River in Utah, where Gardner wiped out in his snowmobile in 2002 and was stranded 17 hours in the wild as the thermometer plunged. He ended up only with frostbite that cost him a middle toe. For the longest time, he kept the toe in a jar in his refrigerator.

It was Colorado Springs in 2004, where he and his Harley-Davidson crossed paths with a Mazda, sending Gardner into a flip over the motorcycle. He got up, walked away, soon was back wrestling, which turned out to be the absolutely safest thing he ever did.

Also about that time, he dislocated his wrist playing basketball. No word if that hurt worse than the time in his childhood he impaled himself with his own hunting arrow. It missed every vital organ. Barely. He walked to the hospital.

Say this for Gardner. Wrestlers would usually be forgotten by the mass media about 90 seconds after their last match. But here’s a guy who knows how to keep the postscripts coming on a gold medal story. Even if it usually ends up with him being carried away on a stretcher.

Name one other Greco-Roman wrestler. Ever. But you can’t forget a man who beat an unbeatable Russian, walked away from a snowmobile crash in one wilderness, a plane crash in another, rode his Harley into a foreign import, and stuck himself with his own arrow.

If Gardner were a cat, he’d be down to few enough lives to count on one hand.