Dan Gable

Dan Gable - The man who defines amateur wrestling!

During his Iowa prep and college careers, Gable compiled an unbelievable record of 182-1. He was undefeated in 64 prep matches.  In college He competed at Iowa State and compiled a 118-1 record. His only defeat came in the NCAA finals his senior year. Dan Gable was a three-time college all-American and three-time Big Eight champion. He set NCAA records in winning and pin streaks.

After college, Gable wrestled internationally and placed first at the 1971 Pan American Games, the 1972 Tbilisi Tournament and the 1971 World Championships. He won an unprecedented six Midlands Open championships and was that meet's outstanding wrestler five times.

At the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, he won a gold medal without surrendering a point to a single opponent. The Soviets came to the Olympics with only one goal in mind: to defeat Gable. They were unsuccessful. Dan Gable had a goal, and he would not allow anything or anyone to stop him. 

In Gable's final 21 Olympic qualification and Olympic matches, he scored 12 falls and outscored his nine other opponents, 130-1. The single point being scored by Larry Owings, who defeated Gable in his final collegiate match.

Gable joined the University of Iowa coaching staff in 1972 as an assistant head coach until taking over the program in 1976.As the University of Iowa's all-time winningest wrestling coach from 1977 to 1997, Gable compiled a career record of 355-21-5, all at Iowa. He coached 152 All-Americans, 45 National Champions, 106 Big Ten Champions and 12 Olympians, including four gold, one silver and three bronze medalists.

The Hawkeyes won 25 consecutive Big Ten championships, 21 under Gable as head coach and four while he was an assistant coach and administrator. He had a winning percentage of .932 and captured nine consecutive (1978-86) NCAA Championships. At the time that equaled the longest streak of national titles won by any school in any sport, and is also held by Yale golf (1905-13) and Southern Cal track (1935-43).

 To get an idea of what drives a wrestler and wrestling coach like Dan Gable, please read some of his more quoted comments: 

• “Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.”
• “Once you've wrestled, everything else in life is easy.”
• “The 1st period is won by the best technician. The 2nd period is won by the kid in the best shape. The 3rd period is won by the kid with the biggest heart.”
• “I shoot, I score. He shoots, I score.”
• “More enduringly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self-control and pride. Some have wrestled without great skill - none have wrestled without pride.”
• “Wrestling is the only sport I've ever competed in that puts you totally in a situation of constant [motion] without breaks. I could play football or baseball, swim -- but there's always some kind of situation that would break my thoughts, break my concentration.”
• “Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.”
• “Wrestling has been a way of life with me day in and day out. I won't get too far away from it. I might walk through the wrestling room once a week. I could go every day if I wanted. But just walk through, make sure it's still there.”
• “I'm a big believer in starting with high standards and raising them. We make progress only when we push ourselves to the highest level. If we don't progress, we backslide into bad habits, laziness and poor attitude.”
• “When you finally decide how successful you really want to be, you've got to set priorities. Then, each and every day, you've got to take care of the top ones. The lower ones may fall behind, but you can't let the top ones slip. You don't forget about the lower ones though because they can add up to hurt you. Just take care of the top ones first. In 25 years as a head coach and assistant, I think I might have missed one practice. Why? Because practice is my top priority. A day doesn't go by when I don't accomplish something in my family life or my profession because those two things are my top priorities.”
• “The obvious goals were there- State Champion, NCAA Champion, Olympic Champion. To get there I had to set an everyday goal which was to push myself to exhaustion or, in other words, to work so hard in practice that someone would have to carry me off the mat.”
• “Raising your level of performance requires a proper mentality and meaning from within. This gives you the ability and drive to work on the things necessary to go to a higher level. When people ask me how to raise their level of performance, the first thing I ask is, How important is it to you?”
• “When I lifted weights, I didn't lift just to maintain my muscle tone. I lifted to increase what I already had, to push to a new limit. Every time I worked, I was getting a little better. I kept moving that limit back and back. Every time I walked out of the gym, I was a little better than when I walked in.”
• “I vowed I wouldn't ever let anyone destroy me again. I was going to work at it every day, so hard that I would be the toughest guy in the world. By the end of practice, I wanted to be physically tired, to know that I'd been through a workout. If I wasn't tired, I must have cheated somehow, so I stayed a little longer. “
• “No one ever drowned in sweat.”
• "I can remember thinking in my corner while the doctors were bandaging me up that nothing was going to stop me." 

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