The noise stops Gable and he looks down, his face stern. Andrew Cutraro. At age four, Gable became active in the Waterloo Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and participated . 2. DIANE REMAINS A daily presence in the Gable home. His wife, Kathy, sat at the computer, waiting on the coffeemaker to start. Later, over beers at a local bar, he tries to remember when the collecting began. Kathy Gable comforts Dan, talking softly to him, and soon he returns, drying his eyes, trying to explain something he doesn't understand. One day in March, he stared at a bowl of pasta, hungry and stubbornly trying not to eat. Also learn how He earned most of networth at the age of 73 years old? They have four children. HIS DAUGHTERS HAVE been watching. They've seen the peaks of arrogance and valleys of self-doubt. He cracks jokes about his cauliflower ear and when the mood strikes, pulls down his lower lip and exposes scar tissue. In a stunning development Friday morning, Dan Gable announced that he was leaving his wife of 28 years over a disagreement about groceries. She confronted her son and slapped him, hard. "You can't ever work too much because there's no such thing as being in too good condition."". They're thinking about downsizing. He says his wife, Kathy, is the one who has loaded showcases and . On their first date, they went on a bike ride. One grandchild swung back and forth in the background as Trump hung the medal around Gable, 72, who represented the US in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.. Gable's grandson Sammy, 6, leaned on the Resolute Desk and bent over nearly backwards.. Another grandson stared at the document pronouncing . Diane's death is a psychic phantom limb, a complicated pain he talks about more each year, even if he still can't articulate how it makes him feel. Katie Gable still pampers her son. The Dan Gable relationship updates suggest that he has been married to Kathy Gable since 1974. It's late afternoon at the compound, near sunset. He's 9, but he can lock into a sporting event for hours and is so disciplined, he cries if he thinks he might be late for school. Dan was on the left side of the bed, on his stomach. To Harold Nichols, Gables coach at Iowa State University in Ames and his arch rival today, such talk is hogwash., The rest of these coaches better get to work and catch up. He put hammers in their cars in case they ran off the road into a body of water. Before a match with main rival Oklahoma State, the girls knew not to talk to their dad, and if they saw him in the tunnel, not to expect a hello. It's been there our whole life. One afternoon, he shows his collection of oversize black scrapbooks, which live in the same room as his used crutches and a pile of rifles and shotguns. You never know what will make a difference to a kid in trouble or to a guy who thinks hes dying. Hed feel like traitor if he left.. My ear fills with liquid and has to be drained with a needle. Too many are sitting on their jobs instead of doing the job, Nichols said. The Hawkeyes, whom he hasn't coached in 16 years, are having a miserable weekend, with no national champions. If they don't fully understand what pushes him, they know which clues are important. Recently, Gable lost out to marathon runner Frank Shorter for a $25,000 endorsement of Canon cameras. The calls came from his desk at the Iowa wrestling office, after he'd finished coaching. A quote from Gable about this loss is, "then I got good". This chapter is entitled The Final Season, which c . His time in the wrestling room, and his quest to make sure the sport survived, helped control the storms he felt inside. He'll likely never wrestle again, stripped of the most important part of himself, his ability to keep his pain buried inside. He had condominiums in Florida, and he flew us there. Some of those kids had been wrestling at Iowa three and four years. Only my family comes before it, said the man who commonly is called the greatest wrestler in U.S. history.. Outside Carver-Hawkeye, he takes small, sliding steps toward his truck, past the statue of him put up a year ago. "McDonough, get up! BOONE, Iowa Twelve of the top high school male and female wrestlers from the 2022-23 season were honored Wednesday at the 13th annual Dan Gable Ms. & Mr. Wrestler Awards banquet. One of Gable's hobbies, which can seem like an obsession, is studying the health benefits of heat. He felt it immediately, a burn, and when he says "burn," his voice changes, like he's feeling it anew. Today, at 53, Gable has finally learned to relax a bit. He offered to take us to his villa in France, but I was too busy. One day, as he walks from the hotel to the arena, he tries to explain why. Carver was definitely an influence on my decision, though. The Russians knew he was good. To his nine grandchildren, he is a jungle gym. St. John bucks and twists, and with 38 seconds left, he breaks his opponent's grip and takes a 3-2 lead. Every day for two years, he tortured himself, refusing surgery for torn cartilage in his knee, scared he would miss out on the Olympics. Mackie and Justin are about to leave, making the drive to Dubuque, where she teaches kindergarten and he coaches soccer. Even Iowa fans will get blas … they want to watch competitive matches and there arent many of those around., Bahr added: I wish Dan Gable would set his sights on the Russians and a world championship. The statue is addressing everyone who passes, demanding that they keep fighting. She tapped him, asked if he knew anything about the Olympics getting rid of wrestling in 2020. The criticism stings, and Gable admits it. Like the Owings loss.". He turns to her for the simplest of questions, such as: "When did my mother die?" "They were doing it before I died," he says, then catches himself. Gable once again is on the trail of what many believe is an impossible dream. But rumors that the late Roy Carver set him up in business before he died are not true, Gable said. Dan explained that a neighborhood boy named Tom Kyle had been saying aggressive, sexual things about Diane, but Dan thought it was just normal guy talk. 267 Copy quote. He has developed a legion of champions at the University of Iowa 10 wrestlers have won national titles, 42 have achieved all-American status since he became head coach in 1977. "I got out of it to save my life.". They left his older sister, Diane, at home. He went 39-0 this season, winning a second straight 220-pound state title. She recalls they went for a bicycle ride around the neighborhood on their first date. To the world, he's a champion. The 21-year-old Apple Valley, Minn . "It's not over!". But, he had to file for divorce over an argument with her. "It burns," he says, gritting his teeth, and he sounds supremely happy. "I don't want to hold back any progress. If you've seen him at a match lately, they're still there, grown up, screaming down at poorly performing wrestlers, questioning their manhood, urging a coach to "slap the shit" out of one who celebrates a poorly wrestled match. He's soaking after his intense daily workout. He leans in and gently kisses her on the forehead. Katie kept bumping her husband, asking over and over what he was hearing. Doctors told him not to wrestle with the Takedown Machine. They have also lived in Rochester, IN. Without wrestling, he felt something missing. The 67-year-old Gable was the featured speaker at a Wrestlers In Business Network banquet in Princeton, NJ in April. His career molded his family, then welded it together. In an instant, Mack Gable can relive his sons fabulous Olympic performance. She was the loving wife of Kevin M. Gable with whom she celebrated they're 36th Watching Gable melt down is like watching Picasso paint. He would station himself in the big picture window, scared that they'd come home and get divorced, or maybe not come home at all. Fishing is the only thing I love besides wrestling and my family, he says. BACK HOME, HE's got a 45-acre spread he's put together in pieces over the years, a place to live out his uneasy retirement. He couldn't use his arm for two weeks, couldn't crank a boat, couldn't chop wood. It's almost like something we've looked up to.". In our NEW edition of "Girl Talk at the Dan Gable Museum," we visit with the ladies of the Gable family. The murder of the teen-ager sister of Dan Gable . He later wrestled for Furman University. He sets his feet far apart and leans down toward the mat. Its the only time he really gets away its a place he goes to escape, said Kathy Gable, Dans wife. His only defeat came in the NCAA finals his senior year. // 1976 To 1997 From 1976 to 1997, Gable was the head coach of wrestling at the University of Iowa. "Blood on the floor of the four-dollar-a-night cabin" is what he says in the sauna, and his friends don't say a word. I knew he was going to create opportunities for us at Iowa so that we didnt have to beg, borrow and steal to become a national power. WATERLOO Good things can come out of deep personal tragedy. He recently said: I get much more satisfaction out of coaching a winner than actually winning myself., More: President Donald Trump to award Dan Gable the Presidential Medal of Freedom, wrestling icon tells Register. All four girls have moved out, started lives of their own. In 1974, Dan Gable married Kathy Carpenter and the couple has four daughters: Jenni, Annie, Molly and Mackenzie. He's still the most famous person in the world of wrestling. The Gable statue outside Carver-Hawkeye Arena calls "stalling" on those who pass by. It's about Gen. Waverly, who is relieved of his command and struggles to build a new life. They refused. He's focused on overturning the IOC decision. . Nobody scored on him in Munich, and when he won, he tossed the medal in the bottom of his gym bag. HIS JOURNEY HAS consumed all of their lives. Ask Dan Gable: What was it like to win an Olympic gold medal? He can rattle off the wrestlers who suffered with him but never got the brief redemption of a championship. That night, a local boy raped her and stabbed her to death with one of the Gables' kitchen knives. NICE JOB, McDONOUGH!". But Gable fears that the old FILA politics will keep the rules from changing. A FEW HOURS before Iowa's final round of the tournament, Gable and two friends find a sauna in a private gym, accessible by an unmarked door and a metal staircase. Hidden in his past, before he ever wrestled a match, there's a story most people don't know. During the first five or six years, I was the dominant figure. 7. When he comes to a trail blocked by a fallen tree, he turns around, making a note to come back later with a chain saw. Taking on other people's pain is why he left the sport. It's a Sunday afternoon, and he heads down to the basement, which is covered with trinkets from his travels. There's a long pause as he thinks. It is eight a.m. Dan Gable is running several miles on a dirt road. The rotator cuff injuries, and an earlier painful fall while hauling in the Christmas tree, had left him hobbled, feeling his age, thinking about the future. The temperature rises toward 200. - Dan Gable. Andrew Cutraro, GABLE SPENDS HIS days trying to be useful. The wrestlers stop in the middle of practice and have Gatorade parties. WATERLOO, Iowa --- On May 31, 1964, a pretty 19-year-old west-side Waterloo girl with the now well-known name of Diane Gable, was slain in her home. The pain of his sister's death had been waiting on a moment of weakness, an opening, and in defeat, he couldn't find the strength that had gotten his family through her passing. He was just a boy. When his mom died in 1994, he found hundreds of letters he'd written in college. Give everything you got today for tomorrow may never come. "Every once in a while," he tells them, "I'll be traveling with Dan and things like that will hit. But Gables father, Mack, talks of the rough times his son had when he joined the University of Iowa coaching staff as an assistant in 1973, just a year after the Olympic victory. He didn't lose as a sophomore at Iowa State, or as a junior. There's a wrestling-size hole in his life, and he is always trying to fill it. What drives him at age 34 to work out with the same ferocity that drove him when he first began pointing to the Olympic gold during college? It's as if the statue of Lombardi outside Lambeau Field were forever calling delay of game, demanding his teams keep pressing. "My wrestling and family go together," he said. Next. Looking for Kathy Gable online? Gable served as the University of Iowa's head wrestling coach for 21 years. He asks the secretary, "You need me?". Dan and Kathy Gable met at a party. There's a yawn of silence. Gable returns, ready to continue. But an old friend, Mike Doughty, has known Gable for decades. Then, in 1997, burned out and with chronic pain in his hip, he quit. Ten seconds pass. Kyle's death brought back the sorrow and grief, the anger and guilt, and Gable walked around his 45 acres when he got home, yelling and screaming at the tall pines. She wanted to wrestle in junior high school, but her mom wouldn't let her join the boys team. Derek St. John, the Iowa 157 and last hope to salvage a national title from a tournament gone wrong, crouches at the center of the mat. He was on a fishing trip with his parents when he heard that his sister, Diane, 19, was found stabbed to death in the kitchen of the familys Waterloo home. Mackie seems unsure, taking a step toward him, then a step back. Former Hawkeye head wresting coach Dan Gable, who led the UI program for 21 years, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, on Dec. 7. . He resides in Iowa City, Iowa, with his wife Kathy. Dan walks through a foot of snow toward the barn, cranking the ATV, the powder blowing over the tires as he accelerates through a clearing in the woods. His throat closed, and the words refused to come out. The memory of his sister comes to him, vividly. They'd driven the block from a rented fishing cabin to a nearby pay phone. Dan Gable is a retired wrestler, coach, Olympic gold medalist, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What role did the late Roy Carver, the multimillionaire from Muscatine, play in Gables decision to coach at the U of I? One night they heard a loud crash; Kathy had asked Dan why he wouldn't kick a wrestler named Rico Chiapparelli off the team if he was causing so many problems, and Gable flipped over the kitchen table. I just wish hed do to the foreigners what he does to us.. Forty-four years ago, on the way to winning the gold medal at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, he didn't yield a . He wont just sit down and relax. Danny is the son of Ed and Patty Olszta. What would he say? by Wright Thompson, Can a fly rod really hold the secret of life? The scars on his damaged knees turned bright red and glistened in the blazing sun. In fact, Dans success is pointing up the state of Iowa in wrestling, and thats good for all of us., From the archives: Chris Taylor, Iowa State's larger-than-life wrestling star. Generations now have come and gone, and Gable remembers the losers more than the winners. When the machine had asked his age, Gable, who is 64, typed in 29, as always, and began attacking the pedals, grinding out frustrations about the IOC and the collapsing Hawkeyes. DAN GABLE PACES suite No. Jenni screams. ", The centers of the Gable home are the Olympics and the memory of his sister, Diane. "It's always been that way, from day one with my mom and dad, my sister, my wife, four daughters, grandsons, son-in-laws. I missed seeing his face in the crowd., Gable was 15 when he was hit with what he calls the worst thing that ever happened in my life.. All of his angst coalesces into one brief window of agony, on Day 2, during Matt McDonough's quarterfinal match. What does he do? He didn't know. All night, he'd peer down the street, looking for headlights. His oldest, Jenni, called from her home up the road and described the look on her son's face when she told him. ", "I feel bad for my dad," Mackie says. They've learned a lot about him by having their own kids. 1 thing I give them.. My goal is hers.. "Dad coached McDonough's dad," one of the girls explains. School administrators worried people wouldn't get it, so after weeks of fighting, they settled on a compromise: (NO) STALLING. He never cheered after one of his own matches, but he'd leap into the air after theirs, and he'd mourn with them after defeats, and sit in a sauna wearing a coat and tie to help them make weight. There are pear trees, apple trees and raspberry bushes on the 26 acres of land. This is the Gable family's favorite part, because it echoes their own lives: a general and his troops, happy to be finished with the battle but missing the fight. The idea of the room kept him tethered to something, and he remained its alpha. After all, this is wrestling, not chess.. Kathleen Theresa (Klein) Gable of Warwick Township, Pa. passed away Monday, July 27, 2020, surrounded by her loving family. Mackie's just up the road in Dubuque, and they get together as much as they can, mostly around wrestling events. He got out of his bed, crossed the hall and climbed into Diane's bed, turning to face the wall. But not much. I had to have a win, just to get it out of me.". It is four p.m. Dan Gable is starting a 2-hour workout in the 95 heat of the wrestling room. All ended up with former athletes, and only Molly lives outside the state of Iowa. Now he is losing again. He never lost, and his parents never missed a match. Photograph By Andrew Cutraro. He'd let his mom and dad down. His wife, Kathy, stood beside him, beaming . Diane Gable, Dan's older sister. Even though she says their relationship improved after he quit, since he suddenly had time to watch her play soccer, she also wanted him to keep coaching. The Waterloo, Iowa, native began wrestling as boy and won three Iowa High School championships and two NCAA championships at Iowa State University. He can be reached at wrightespn@gmail.com. Everyone expects him to lead the fight against the IOC. His daughters are funny, pretty and intense. They should be fired, he said. Pain and relief, even then. He needs something to do. "Our gold medal," Mackie starts to say one day, laughing, correcting herself. Just as quickly he jumps back into the hot water, his body temperature skyrocketing, the snow melting off. University of Iowa wrestling legend and Waterloo native Dan Gable knows. But these days are almost finished. That sticks in her mind, for some reason -- him peaceful, unaware. My dedication to Diane kept me straighter she was a motivating force. A May 8th wedding is planned in Iowa . Gable resides in Iowa City with his wife Kathy and has four daughters, Jenni Mitchell, Annie Gavin, Molly Olszta and Mackenzie McCord. Both talk as if theyd like more children. Dan's parents fought, torn apart by the murder. He struggles with it. I love wrestling its my whole life. Gable led the University of Iowa to 15 NCAA Championships and 21 consecutive Big 10 Championships during his 21 seasons as head coach (1977-97). Dan loved the look on their faces when he won. Recently, the Mr. Nice guy of the wrestling world ha suffered what Gable calls the worst barrage of criticism in my career., In a Sports Illustrated article that appeared after Iowa won its sixth straight NCAA championship this year, Yale coach Bert Waterman said: This is no national championship. "I almost feel -- not useless, but ", The IOC's decision is based on internal politics, he explains. Dan's obsession became theirs. A lot of times, I take one of my star wrestlers with me when I visit the hospital, Gable said. Andrew Cutraro. Oldest grandson Gable sits in his chair, never taking his eyes off the mats. It was dark outside. Gable candidly admits that money never has been a driving force for me I dont even want to know how much money Ive got. "No one has done . Making the turn down the hall to join his family, he thinks about his useless gear gathering dust in the Iowa wrestling room. These things must mean something. Gable's life is governed by justification and guilt, as if he's forever paying off some unseen debt. They're not wrestling aggressively, not attacking until the end of the third period, and after yet another defeat, Annie rushes back to Dan and says, "Dad, you gotta start coaching again," an idea that is repeated not much later by a former college wrestler in the suite. Wrestling kept his daughters from sitting in a window looking for headlights. Leaning over, he carefully wipes the snow off with his hand. The international wrestling governing body's leader and lieutenants weren't respected in the Olympic community and were told repeatedly to make changes to the sport, to fix many of the confusing rules that had been added over the years. "I'm coming here with one thing in mind," Dan says after checking into his suite on the 10th floor of the Savery Hotel, reaching into the closet and thumbing past two Iowa jackets before pulling out one that says USA. Andrew Cutraro, "I have these kids," Annie says. During a speech not long ago, Gable laughed about the rolling circus that travels with him. The family threw away all its knives, not knowing which one had been used. They said they loved him and that he could save wrestling. His hands twitch. She never really had a chance to do the things she loved. Kathy Gable provided a sense of common everyday life for her family while her husband produced uncommon results. Courtesy Gable Family.
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